The Veil of Velvet Dreams
by Davos Seaworth
Summary: For fifteen years, Terra Pike's known only the sand and sun of District 5. Every year the Hunger Games have passed her over - but when the Reaping for the 96th Games arrives, Terra will be yanked from her sleepy home and thrown into the Capitol's grindhouse of murder, lies, and deception, where darkness will stretch thin Terra's hopes for life, love, and a future to believe in.
1. Two Worlds

_**Katniss Everdeen's courage failed her at the Reaping of the 74**__**th**__** Hunger Games, and she watched in horror as little Primrose Everdeen fell in the arena – a victim of circumstance, youth, and all-consuming destiny. But smarts beat strength in that forested arena, as an unheralded tribute from District 5, Finch – a girl with a face like a fox and hair as red as fire – emerged victorious. But a twist of fate alters every strand of the future, and with no spark of rebellion, unrest churned across Panem for years beneath a shadow of oppression.**_

_**Yet even the iron fist of a tyrant can be shattered.**_

_**Now, with the 96**__**th**__** Hunger Games looming on the horizon, the slip of a finger alters the fate of Panem forever. For young Terra Pike of District 5, the shockwaves won't be felt immediately. As shadows cross Terra's path, however, she'll be thrust into a dark new order of the Capitol and the Hunger Games – and the menacing storm raging beneath Panem's veil.**_

**/ / / / /  
**

Snow fell, and three ropes jerked.

The winter air bellowed with the cheers of a thousand applauding onlookers. Encircled by the mob, three bodies suspended by their necks shook from head to toe, wracked with spasms of death. Their eyes glazed over with oblivion and their mouths frothed as if collecting the flurries fluttering down from the overcast night sky. Neon red and green lights lit up the bodies as onlookers laughed and pointed. These men had been dreamers once, but every action carried a consequence. Theirs had cost them their lives and rendered them as nothing more than an amusement for a Capitol audience eager for entertainment.

A hanging well done.

A tall man with the first hints of a receding silvery hairline watched from a secluded balcony. He folded his arms and pulled his crimson cloak tighter across his narrow shoulders to ward out the night's cold.

"Let them have a few hours of fun," he said. "Then cut the bodies down and get rid of them."

"And your father's body?" a stout man to his left said. "He's been lying in state for two days, Creon. Give them more time to mourn."

Creon Snow's jaw tightened. "Enough grieving. Find a place in the crypt for a body and get on with it."

The other man frowned. Cyrus Locke had served Coriolanus Snow for more than a decade and earned the trust of the legendary president of Panem. He'd watched Snow's Hunger Games, seen him put down riots in District 8 and 11, and expanded the iron reach of the Capitol to every overlooked corner of the country. Snow's thanks for fifty years of hard work? Nothing more than a brief speech from his son before his body, its neck still bearing the needle wound of an assassin's venom-tipped dart, would be buried and forgotten in a concrete-lined vault.

So ended an era in Panem. A giant retired, brought down by a trio of ragged philistines. What replaced him? A son, a man? Cyrus had earned Creon Snow's trust, but he didn't know how well he understood the new ruler of millions.

"Those people out there loved your father," Cyrus protested as Creon watched his glowing city. "Loved. Let them mourn. He deserves a little respect."

Creon turned and pushed open a glass door behind the two men. Inside had once housed the former President Snow's greatest escape, a greenhouse home to all species of Coriolanus's treasured roses, brought in from the Capitol to the districts to the tropical southern frontier of the nation. Now the shelves were bare, and hundreds of wilting flowers piled up in a pyre in the center of the room.

"Respect?" Creon said, turning on his companion. "Two days of shutting down this city isn't enough respect?"

"He gave a half-century to this city. He was a visionary, an icon. Build a monument, declare a holiday, put on a special Hunger Games for the year, _something. _He earned that much."

Cyrus had never seen Creon smile. The man's stony face, gray eyes, and wispy hair made him look like a statue of ice in the chilly greenhouse. Hepicked up a thick wooden rod, with black tar coating a wound-up rag at one end. The new president pulled out a metal lighter from his robe and glanced at the pile of dying roses.

"He wouldn't hear your respect," said Creon. "All dead men are blind and deaf."

The man clicked his lighter on. A tiny droplet of flame sprung from the tip, and when Creon pressed it to the tarry rag, fire leapt up in great bouts.

Shadows writhed upon his stony face. "I don't have any doubts about your loyalty, Cyrus. This country, though, the people here and in the districts…they need a leader. They need guidance, and they need it now. You think a memory or a monument is enough for that?"

"No."

Creon tossed his torch onto the pile of roses. Flame blossomed above the fertile earth of dead things. Wisps of inky smoke slithered through holes in the greenhouse ceiling.

"Enough looking back," Creon said. He turned his back on the fire and staring out at the winking white lights of the Capitol's towers. "The people can have the fun and games my father loved so much. We have to watch over this country now, Cyrus. We've got work to do."

**/ / / / /  
**

I had to hurry.

A mile-high giant lumbered towards me from the horizon. The sandstorm had welled up in just minutes off the distance, and in no time the towering tan cloud of dust had closed in on the desert flats. Dark Hell, I was stupid. I hadn't been paying attention at all to the wind as I'd hooked up electrical cables to row after row of solar panels. Now I was going to pay for it if I couldn't rush out of here. Already, strong gusts whipped between the fields of glistening silver panels arranged all around me in perfectly geometric arrays. Dust clumped up in mounds next to the thick black cables I'd been hauling about just a few minutes before. The sun still beat down without mercy on the baked land and on my sweat-beaded forehead, but the storm would begin to blot out the daylight in moments.

Forget walking. I broke out into a run.

My brown hair billowed around me as I sprinted towards a wooden scaffolding a quarter-mile away. The rough desert heat made my legs feel like jelly, and I only half-watched where I placed my feet as I ran. Before I knew it, my foot tripped against a black computer monitoring cube, sending me sprawling. "Fuck!"

I rubbed sand from my bright blue eyes and glanced over my shoulder. The cloud laughed at my efforts to get away. In a mere minute, it had swelled up from a looming giant into an onrushing freight train of sand and swirling grit. I had two minutes - at best - to get to the lift before it'd overtake me.

No time to sit here and nurse my aching knee. I jumped to my feet and took off running again. Off to my left, a furious dust devil whipped across the ground. Gusts battered my white shirt with a coat of khaki dust, and the yellow scarf tied around my neck yanked like a wind sock. The air coagulated with dust as the sandstorm rolled in. Already I couldn't see the most distant solar panels I'd just been working on. The haze was from more than just the storm: The heat had set off a hammer pounding inside of my head, and my parched tongue felt covered in scales.

I made a mental note to keep myself better hydrated and gritted my teeth. As the first blast of the storm sandblasted the back of my neck, I dashed up to the scaffolding and banging open the elevator's rusty metal doors.

"No, no, no!" I cried as I banged on the black buttons to take me down from the canyon ridge. Bad luck - _of course. _On the back wall of the elevator, someone had hung a wooden "closed - maintenance" sign that spun around on a loop of frayed yarn. Thanks for telling me, guys.

I cursed and tied my scarf around my nose and mouth, shielding my eyes with one hand and bracing against the wind with my other arm. The air was a monster now, one giant, coalescing beast of sandpaper that stormed all around me. I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of the wooden fence that ran fifteen yards to the left, the only thing between me and a drop of hundreds of feet down the rocky canyon.

Gah, I should've gotten down below a half-hour ago. _This is your fault, idiot girl_, I thought.

"Terra!"

I stopped. There was someone else in the storm - someone calling my name. I'd heard _something_, something more than the feeling that I would have to wait this storm out alone and curled up in a ball in the broken elevator.

"Terra!"

A shadow materialized in the storm. I shook my head and looked down as a piece of rock lodged in my eye. When I glanced back up, the shadow jogged forward and grabbed my shoulder.

"-hell are you doing?"

I could barely hear the shadow's words, but I knew my rescuer's thin build, rugged brown jacket, and fine brown hair that looked so much like my own - a copy, even.

"Flint!" I cried, waving my hand in the air to steady myself in the wind.

My twin brother pulled my face into his jacket. "Come on," said Flint.

I coughed and grabbed his waist he pushed ahead into the storm, the lapel of his jacket blocking out the worst of the dust. I was thankful that he'd come for me. I knew the path back to the stairwell that led down the canyon walls to home and hearth - really, I did - but the storm's arrival had thrown off any semblance of direction. There was nothing now but me, Flint, and the rushing wind. Nature had draped a sepia veil over the red desert and blue afternoon skies.

Flint pulled me towards a wooden railing and tightened his grip on my hand. Corrugated steel railings materialized through the dust, and I reached out to grab the rough metal. Finally! I nearly jumped down to the first rickety step in excitement, eager to head down the zig-zagging descent to the canyon floor below. The metal groaned under my feet.

_Creak, creak, creak._

Craggy rock walls on all sides towered higher and higher as I hurried down the stairs. The lower I went, the more the dust storm dissipated, weakening from a gale into a dusty, dry breeze despite the loud howling up above. As the air cleared, District 5 opened up around me.

A giant limestone dam loomed up behind Flint and I, its placid white face resilient against the storm, its brute strength holding back the majestic crystal lake behind it. Thousands of gallons of water rushed out from holes on either side of the canyon, generating electricity for the Capitol and refreshing the powerful river below. That dam was our bread and butter here in District 5, the biggest part of everything that we were. Wind turbines scattered around the surface and built into the canyon walls twisted in the wind, and solar farms and other power sources added to the electricity that we worked so hard to produce - but the dam was an ever-present reminder of exactly why the Capitol and the Peacekeepers were lenient here.

Houses jutted out from the rock on either side of the river below. Some were no more than bungalows, tiny mouse holes cut into the ancient rock, while others, two stories high and built of mud brick and imported white wood clustered about markets and watering holes, interspersed with hardy desert scrub and the occasional brown-tipped palm frond. Even with dust from above lingering in the air, I could just see the towering green algae farms popping up over the canyon walls further down the river. The desert was dry, but life still thrived here.

I had to give her home this much credit: District 5 offered a striking view.

"Terra," Flint said, grabbing my shoulder and stopping me before I could trot down the rest of the staircase. "What'd you do, fall asleep up there? You can't see a damn storm coming?"

I pulled my scarf away from my face and looked off into the distance. "I just got carried away. Sorry."

"You got carried away connecting solar panels?"

I clutched my arms to my side and stepped away. I hated it whenever Flint sounded like this, as if he'd already made up his mind about things before I had a chance to defend myself. Why'd he have to be so critical whenever I slipped up? He wasn't our father.

Heck, I even came out first..._  
_

"Why'd you come up?" I asked, trying to steer clear of another drawn-out, patronizing argument.

"Don't change the subject."

"Look, some of the panels were glitchy. they wanted me to look at 'em. Can you just leave it?"

"Who's they? That Peacekeeper supervisor guy?"

"Yes. Orson."

Flint paused and looked towards the buildings below. I followed his gaze. Down near the canyon bend, Peacekeepers had set up tall scaffolds draped in scarlet sheets. The gold of Panem's eagle seal glistened through the haze.

_Reaping tomorrow_.

My gut churned, and I knew why. It was the new president's first Reaping. There was a new Snow leading the country, six months on the job since he old president's death, but would the Hunger Games change as well? The annual festival of blood had been a staple in Panem for nearly ninety-six years; I'd never known life without it every summer. Then again, Coriolanus Snow had been a constant as well. Now he was nothing but dust, no firmer than the sand swirling about above the canyon.

Flint frowned. "Dad wanted me to bring you home before tomorrow. I didn't see you come down with the other guys."

I held back a feeling of resentment in my heart, tempering my urge to ask why _he_ didn't work along the solar arrays like I did after school. I already knew the answer: Our father and mother needed a hand to help in our family's cantina, and they kept Flint around for that. I know what they thought of me. I was extra income, a benefit, a perk. After all, our father had wanted a son...and as he'd said, I was too quiet and "too prone to staring" for working in the cantina, anyway. I guess that made me "weird."

"You know," Flint added when I sighed. "Just want to look like everyone else. Families all get together the evening before the Reaping and all."

And the sun forbid we didn't keep up with the other merchant families_. _"Great. Let's just go."

I shrugged and looked across the canyon. A freight elevator sat motionless at the bottom of a lift that stretched from the canyon floor to the top of the desert. The train station was up there, just a pile of sandstone and mud bricks lost in the dust storm today. Tomorrow it'd take two kids away from here – forever, if our district's recent track record in the Games continued.

_Reaping tomorrow. _

**/ / / / /**

_**~ Thanks for reading! This is a take on an alternate history when Katniss can't summon up the courage to volunteer for Prim. Predictably, Prim…never made it out of the arena. Foxface won the 74**__**th**__** Games, and without a symbol to rally around, the rebellion never came together. It's technically a story that I half-finished two years ago under a different account name, but new and improved!  
**_

_**Any questions, comments, criticisms, etc. are always welcome! Many of your favorite characters will show up eventually, but a great deal won't show up until later on in the plot as things develop. A few other minor plot points have been adjusted for creative content. Rated T for a helluva lot of violence (it's the Games…) plus language and mature themes/content. Suzanne Collins owns all original property of The Hunger Games. Enjoy!**_


	2. The Edge

"Does he just stand there like that? Every day?"

I watched the cliff – and the boy. He was a skinny kid dressed in baggy brown clothes with a mop of red hair. That vivid hair was the only notable thing I could pick out about him, besides his standing right at the edge of a cliff that plummeted a hundred feet down into the river. A half-dozen jagged rocks stuck up from the water like predators waiting to nab the boy if he fell. But he didn't, nor did he move. He simply stood there, waiting for nothing.

"I've seen him a couple of times," I murmured.

The tall girl kneeling on a rock to my left snorted. "A gust is gonna push him off if he stays there. That, or a Peacekeeper will if he stays there through the Reaping."

"I don't think he'd do that."

"How d'you know?"

"I don't think anyone would do that, Dawn."

Dawn scoffed. She may have been my cousin, but our resemblances ended there. She was two years older than me and had the same dirty blonde hair of my father. It figured, since she was the only child of my father's older brother, and Dawn bore plenty of other resemblances to the man – and more than just physical similarities. Privately, I wondered from time to time whether my father would have preferred her as a daughter.

She glanced back up at the boy on the ledge. "Maybe he's too old for the Reaping."

"Why do you care?" I grumbled.

Dawn shrugged, and with a smirk said, "I dunno. It's just fascinating in a morbid sort of way. Kid on a ledge all by himself. Why's he up there?"

"Exploring? I do it in caves I find, even by myself when you're not around."

"Do you stare off of a hundred-foot ledge when you do it?"

"No, but –"

"See? Not normal, then," Dawn said, looking triumphant.

I looked back up and felt a pang of guilt. For all Dawn knew, the kid had plenty of reasons to be up there. I'd felt left out in school many times, and now I was sitting quietly as my cousin poked fun at a random boy for exactly the same thing.

"Let's just go," I muttered. "It's a couple miles back to City Center."

"And at least two hours 'til we have to be there to sign in," Dawn sighed. She brushed dust off of her trousers, glancing back at the boy once and shaking her head. "Good girl Terra, pooping on the party."

I ignored her as we set off hiking down the canyon. I didn't know why I put up with Dawn. Maybe I was desperate for friendship, and her spending time with me, even if it felt exhausting, was still better than real loneliness. I'd never liked crowds and had struggled to connect with others, and in the tightly-knit community of District 5, that had weighed me down like a rock tied to my foot. I got along with my coworkers up at the solar arrays, but besides Dawn and her friend Cliff, only my brother paid me much attention.

Dawn didn't help on our hike back.

"You gonna meet up with anyone before the Reaping?" she asked, tossing a rock up and down as we walked past a pyramidal red rock jutting out into a bend in the river. A trio of tiny mud brick houses stood across the river, flanked by a gaggle of giggling toddlers and a tall white wind turbine. The tower's vanes were still in the stagnant afternoon air, with the sun from a cloudless sky glistening off the metal. It was a far cry from the dust storm that had moved in so fast yesterday and hung around until sunset.

"No," I said, staring down at my feet.

"I'm gonna meet Cliff and a couple other guys beforehand. Are all your friends with their families?"

There we went again. I knew she knew what I'd say, but I figured Dawn enjoyed having the upper hand. "I'm just going alone. With Flint, I guess."

"You need to get out more, Terra. Go talk to more people at school."

_Great. I'll pluck some friends off of my friend tree._ "Yeah, sure. I'll get on that."

Dawn dominated the conversation on the walk back to the Merchant Quarter and home. I only half paid attention, my mind drifting towards the Reaping. It wasn't because I was afraid of being Reaped, given that only four slips read "Terra Pike, Age 15" on them this year. The thought of standing in the midst of thousands of other teens, with the cameras focused on our every move, unnerved me.

The Hunger Games frightened me almost as much as the constant focus of the cameras as it did from the prospect of a brutal death.

As an ache grew in my feet from the walk, the brown and red buildings of town popped up along the canyon walls. People filed over the stone bridges that arched across the canyon river, some heading home to spend time with their children, others heading off for a pre-Reaping drink. Screens as tall as two men stood here and there for the adults, most of whom wouldn't fit in the public square in City Center. The Merchant Quarter was a hive of activity as Dawn and I strolled back into town.

The two brass bells on the nearby cobblestone-walled Church of the Triad clanged five times – one hour until the Reaping, the second to the last one in Panem on this day. Already, most of the tributes in the 96th Hunger Games had been Reaped, and many were on the trains headed towards the Capitol. District 5, however, was close to the central city; it'd only be a short overnight jaunt for the two kids picked today.

Dawn stopped me in front of a wooden stand laden with yucca fronds and jugs of white palm wine, glancing over her shoulder as two merchants argued to one another.

"I'm gonna go," she said. "See you 'round, Terra. Happy Hunger Games, and all that."

She scampered away as soon as she'd finished, leaving before I could get in a word. "Yeah," I muttered, kicking a pebble under the merchant stand. "Happy Hunger Games to you, too, Dawn."

I plodded through the red dirt streets, sliding past bantering young men chattering about tributes selected earlier in the day. I had too much on my mind to listen in.

A number of revelers happy for the day off of work clustered around the wooden doors to an old, two-story bar near the southern end of the Merchant's Quarter. Pike's Cantina, read the blue block lettering on a splintering wooden sign above the door. Home sweet home. I hung my head and stared down at my feet as I walked up to the door, ignoring what was in front of me just enough to run straight into a brick wall.

"Oof!"

I tumbled backwards, clutching my cheek where the bone had collided with solid mass. It wasn't a wall I'd hit.

"The hell are you doing?"

A beast of a man towered over me. He'd lost the hair on his head long ago, but a thick, beard still covered his chin and cheeks in a black jungle. A long scar ran across the man's face from just beside his right eye down to his jawline. The man's broad shoulders and loose-fitting brown vest only made him look more fearsome, putting his bulging arm muscles on display. It had been twenty-four years since Daud Mosely had won the 72nd Hunger Games, but he still looked the part of a natural killer.

I scrambled to my feet, still nursing my cheek. "Sorry, sorry I'm just – just going in."

Daud clutched a clear plastic jug of palm wine in his hand. He took a long swig of the drink and said, "Too young for this swill, girl."

"Just going home," I whispered, eager to get away from the brute of a man. Daud had a horrid reputation in District 5: Not only had he cut down his own district partner without blinking during his time in the arena, but he'd also had as little to do with anyone else here since then – and adding insult to injury, he'd only managed to bring one victor back home since his victory, when Finch had won in the 74th Games. Numerous times after coming home from school and work, I'd seen him drinking alone in the cantina, always choking back the same bitter palm wine in slow, measured swigs. Sometimes he clutched a tattered, leather-bound book in those boulder-sized hands of his, sometimes merely watching the bar like a vulture scouting out its prey.

I didn't want to know what he thought of the place.

As I pushed open the door, Daud grabbed my shoulder. I froze.

"Barkeep's girl?" he asked.

I didn't answer. _Let me go. Just go away._

"Better get ready," Daud grunted, letting go of my shoulder. "Look pretty for the district."

_Thwoosh_. Daud took another swig from his jug.

_Look pretty for the district_. I wondered why he'd said "district," rather than "Capitol" – but then again, it was probably all the same to a man like him. My mother doubted the victor was all there in his head, and I couldn't disagree.

Things didn't improve for me as soon as I entered the bar.

The hazy, poorly-lit interior wasn't as full as I was used to, but two dozen noisy patrons still clinked together glasses and mugs. Judging by the acrid miasma of vomit and booze in the air, someone had drunk far too much in preparation for the Reaping. A pair of chairs lay upended in the corner of the sitting area, with a deck of playing cards scattered about like fallen birds all around them.

Up by the splintering wooden bar, a gray-haired man talked spiritedly with a lanky, dark-haired woman with bright blue eyes. Sometimes I wished my father cared about who my mother chatted up in this place, but to him, it was just good business.

My mother was business. I was income. My brother was an heir. That was our family, to each their roles.

"Mom," I said quietly, sidling up to the bar as far from the man talking her up as I could. "I need –"

"Go take a bath," she interrupted, not bothering to look my way.

"I know, I just need something to change into."

"Your brother put your dress out. Go take a bath."

_Love you too_. I so adored our family talks. Glancing back at my mother talking to the patron at the bar made me think of the boy on the ledge that afternoon. There was something peaceful about being alone on top of a cliff like that, I thought as I tromped down the stairs to our basement washroom. Peaceful, powerful, alone – but in a good way. Maybe Daud was right to turn away from this bustling, busy district full of people I was eager to avoid.

I let my thoughts diffuse into a jumble of nonsense as I washed the red dust of the canyon out of my hair. _Look pretty for the district_. I wouldn't do any more than pretty. Everything would just get dirty again as soon as the wind kicked up, filling every available nook and cranny with the desert sand.

_Mindless_. That was the best I could manage as I pulled on the solid blue Reaping dress my brother had laid out on my bed in our bedroom. _Step out of the bath. Put the stuff on. Walk to the Reaping. Stand. Go home._ Not my idea of exciting television, no matter what the Capitol thought.

"Terra?"

Flint peeked in from my doorway, already dressed in smoothed-out brown trousers and a green button-down shirt. In a way…he did look nice.

"You look fine," he said, reciprocating my thoughts. "But put your hair up. It's a mess."

Always that "but." Still, I didn't argue. I pulled up my hair and fixed my ponytail with a blue ribbon before Flint hurried me up the stairs, urging that we were late. Late to him meant fifteen minutes early, and the thought of standing around with all the kids I didn't know in City Center made me nervous. _Let's just get this done with_.

Fellow teens flooded the street as Flint and I left the bar to a simple "hurry home" from our mother. I hadn't even seen my father since the morning. It made me glad, in a way: He wasn't someone I wanted to see before this. I didn't need him breathing down my neck about this or that as I tried to calm my nerves in the swirling school of children headed across the river bridge towards the gray stone buildings of City Center.

_Clang!_

The church bells banged again – one, two, _six_ times. Reaping time, time for the afternoon shadows to grow long and thin as the sun neared the end of its trek across the sky.

"You alright?"

Flint grabbed my hand as we walked across the river. I only noticed then that I'd been clutching my sides.

"Fine," I muttered, lying more to myself than him.

"It's, uh," Flint stuttered. "Not good at this stuff, but it's just a short thing, Terra. We'll be back home in an hour."

I nodded. Just an hour.

The crowds on the street made my head feel hazy. I clenched my teeth as Flint and I separated at the tables to sign in for the Reaping. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply to steady myself. _Just an hour with all these other people_.

The sign-in line seemed to take an hour on its own, as we inched towards the Peacekeeper-crewed tables at a snail's pace. It was almost a relief by the time I got to the front and one of the Peacekeepers logged me in. Terra Pike, here for the fourth year. Three more of these to go after today.

The Capitolian media crew had turned City Center into a monument to Panem. Scarlet and gold banners hung from every building in the square, and workers had laid down artificial stone on the dusty ground to give a more classical take for the cameras. A giant, stylized portrait of the late President Coriolanus Snow hung from a white banner that covered the front of the Hall of Justice, accompanied by a smaller gold banner with the likeness of his son, the new president Creon. _Pageantry!_ I thought. _Maybe it looks better on TV_.

I clutched my arms around my sides again as soon as I lined up in the roped-off fifteen year-old girls' section of the square. I clutched my hands to my sides as sweat beaded up under my arms. Most of the girls were quiet, but when I glanced up at the hulking cameras arranged around the rooftops, I imagined each of them looking down at me. _Take a look, ladies and gentlemen_, I could even now hear Cicero Templesmith booming. _Look at this creature! Wouldn't want to Reap that! It might die during our pre-Games interviews!_

I stood up on my tiptoes, trying to find Flint in the crowd. Nothing – nothing but heads, heads, and more heads, faces I didn't recognize, a sea of people probably wondering why I was craning my neck like a stork. Forget it. I stared at the ground as the last kids filed into the square. Up at the landing in front of the Hall of Justice, our old mayor had walked through the doors and was busy tapping the microphone in testing. He was alone save for one person sitting down in a chair off to the side – the last person I expected to show up early.

Daud. He looked half-asleep, but there he was, still clutching his jug of wine.

He wasn't alone for long. A flash of red hair burst through the door as a short woman hurried onto the stage, saying a quick hello to the mayor before siding up next to Daud. Unlike Daud, Finch Rivers was a respectable victor. The winner of the 74th Games may have kept to herself, but she'd emerged from the arena behind a minimum of bloodshed – and if cantina rumors were to be believed, Finch had done her best to try and bring someone home every year, even if she had failed every time. Even Daud seemed happy to see her when she plopped down in a chair beside him, offering up the first smile I'd ever seen from the man.

The last member of the party emerged after another five minutes, bursting from the door with the usual swirl of his long, flowing charcoal-gray cloak. I never knew what to make of Elan Triste, District 5's Capitol escort. He looked like any other escort from past Games showings, but something about the way he carried himself ramrod-straight, with a careful, measured step, told me he carried something else underneath those robes.

To his credit – and my thankfulness – he didn't waste any time getting started. "I'll pass on the usual introduction I'm sure you've all figured it out by now," Elan said, rubbing a hand over his navy blue-dyed, short-cropped hair. "But I will take the time to say a word of remembrance."

Elan turned back towards the banner behind him. "Coriolanus Snow as a good man, an orderly man who presided over a strong rule for 50 years. The Hunger Games, Panem itself, models of stability. The Games themselves, after all, are as much a monument to that peace as anything. May our new president reign just as successfully. He deserves a moment."

The escort paused, clutching his hands together and closing one eye. Clearly Elan didn't care about following the usual protocol of kicking off the Reaping, but did he care that much about the late president? Was it all for show?

"Thank you," Elan said before I could think any further. I noticed a camera looking right at our section and I glanced down at my feet again. _They're staring right at me. Right now. Ugh_.

"Let's begin, District 5."

Elan hurried over to the first Reaping bowl. He hadn't announced which gender he'd select first, but he'd traditionally kicked things off with girls. For a brief moment, my breath caught in my chest. The thoughts of the cameras, the staring Capitol audience, the other kids packed in around me – all of those disappeared. For that moment, I only cared about Elan's fingers darting through the bowl.

_Please don't._

He frowned as he plucked a strip from the bowl and read it over once. As if on cue, his eyes darted up towards my section.

"If I could ask Miss Terra Pike to come to the stage."

The square froze. I couldn't pretend I'd misheard what Elan had said. _Terra Pike_. Me.

Oh, shit. Shit, shit, _shit_.

Now _all _the cameras were looking at me.

I couldn't help myself. My left knee gave out and I stumbled down into the ground, planting a hand onto the fake stone to keep myself up. My eyes welled up as I glanced up. Two Peacekeepers were already on their way…and I knew I wouldn't be able to get up in time to stop them from dragging me to the stage.

"No," I choked as one of the Peacekeepers grabbed my arm, yanking me up off of the ground.

My eyes flooded over with tears as the Peacekeeper forced me forward. I hadn't really thought Dawn was a bad friend, or that my family thought I was a nuisance. Really! I could live with them. I wouldn't mind. Just not this, not this.

I could imagine Cicero's excited shouts already: "In the president's name, a real waterworks from District 5! My word, folks, we'll need a cleanup crew…"

I didn't care. Every step towards the stage and every jab from the Peacekeeper's fist brought another round of tears from my eyes and a pathetic little sob from my throat.

"Please," I cried to the Peacekeeper as I reached the stairs to the stage. "I didn't do anything. I don't want this!"

He jabbed his fist into the small of my back, sending me stumbling up the stairs. Right before I lost my balance, a firm hand reached out and grabbed my arm. I looked up, blinking away tears, as Elan stared down at me. Somewhere behind those dull gray eyes of his was a flash of something I didn't expect – sympathy.

"It's only for a little while," he whispered as he pulled me up onto the stage. In a snap, he turned back to the microphone. "Terra Pike, ladies and gentlemen. Your tribute for the girls."

No one clapped. No one did much of anything except for the girls exhaling in relief of avoiding another year, but I could barely focus on standing up straight. My eyes had turned into jelly, and my throat already was growing scratchy from crying. By the time Elan announced "Glenn Turner" for the boys, my dress's sleeve was drenched in tears I'd hastily brushed off of my cheeks.

I had to stop when I saw the boy who'd be joining me on this horrible misadventure. Glenn wasn't crying, nor panicking and pleading like me. He was as stiff as a board, his face as stony as the canyon walls.

I didn't know him by name, but I knew who he was. I'd seen him standing alone on a cliff just a few hours before.

**/ / / / /**

_**+ Thanks for all the reads so far, guys, and big thanks to BamItsTyler for the favorite and follow!**_


	3. Narratives

_**+ Huge shout-out to both ArtemisCarolineSnow and BamItsTyler for the reviews! Thanks guys, feedback's always great to hear, and thank you as well to everyone who's reading!**_

_**/ / / / /**_

When Glenn stepped up to the podium, I felt even worse for idling as Dawn made fun of him earlier.

There was nothing behind his glassy hazel eyes. Glenn's face lacked any sign of a spark, but I doubted it was just because of the Reaping. He looked like he'd been dead inside for a long time, from the way his cheeks stretched tight over his face, to the creases that dug gorges his dust-covered forehead, and to the way his eyes seemed to sink into his face. Even that bright red hair of his didn't look so vivid up close. It thinned in patches, as if someone had plucked out hairs here and there at random.

No one applauded for Glenn. No one in the crowd showed as much as a tear of remorse for his Reaping. When he shook my hand with a clammy, chilly grip, I held on to his palm for just an extra second. My eyes clouded up with a fresh spring of tears, but I couldn't help but feel for the emptiness I saw in my district partner.

We were both in trouble, but from the way he looked at me – _through_ me, even – I guessed Glenn had been troubled for quite some time already.

"Don't waste time out here," Elan whispered to us, ushering Glenn and I towards the Justice Hall's doors. " Go in."

I was grateful to him. All the eyes watching me fall apart on the stage, both in the square and through those probing cameras all around the rooftops, made me want to curl up into a ball. The lights were icy white inside the spartan wood-lined halls of the building, and the air was too cold for mid-June, but at least I was free from all those prying eyes in here.

Free. Free to press my face into the plush cushions of hard-backed couch in this room the Peacekeepers left me in. Free to digest my shock and terrible luck all alone, with my only company the leering gazes of old, wrinkling men frozen in time via blurry pastel portraits hung around the room.

What a morbid send-off.

I sniffed and wiped my nose on the pillow just as the door creaked open. I didn't know who I was expecting to visit me – Flint maybe, or Dawn – but it was neither my brother nor my cousin walking into the room as I looked up. It was my father.

I hastened to wipe the tears off of my face. I didn't want to fall apart like this in front of him.

My father inhaled sharply and sat down in a chair in front of me. He rubbed his eyes with a weary, vein-streaked hand, leaned back, and said, "Terra…not a lot of time. Your mother said she couldn't handle coming in, but you should know that she's not happy about any of this."

I started to reply, but he held up his hand: "No. Just let me talk. Stay there."

"It's the Hunger Games," he said. "Everyone knows the odds aren't very good, so I'm not going to bother talking about how to get out of the arena. I'm a smart man. It's just…"

He paused and glanced down at his hands. Not once had my father made eye contact. "You're my child, and you have my name. You're Terra Pike, not Terra anyone else. That's enough crying. When you go back out there to the train, stand up straight and tall. Be proud of who you are."

"Dad, I –"

"No. That's enough."

My father got up, and for the first time since he'd stepped into the room, he looked me square in the eye. I didn't see remorse or regret in the lines on his face. I didn't see anything but the hardness I'd always seen in my father. The Reaping hadn't changed him.

"Don't let me down, daughter," he said.

The door swung open and my father was gone.

I buried my head back in the cushions. _Stand up straight_. I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything more from my father. Even now I was just an extension from him, and my pleading on the way up to the stage no doubt wouldn't impress the district. _There goes another one_, I heard them say in my head. _We feel bad, but what can we do? That's bad luck_.

My eyes threatened to unleash another river, but I held back the tears this time. I didn't relate to my father much, but maybe he was right about this. If I was doomed anyway, maybe I just needed to swallow my fear and clench my jaw. I was scared, but I couldn't change that. Hell, couldn't looking tough even give me a better chance in the Games?

By the time Flint stepped into the room, my face was bone dry.

"Terra?"

I leaned back and straightened up as Flint eschewed the chair, flopping down beside me and laying a hand on my knee. "You, uh," he stammered. "You...how are you?"

_Don't cry again. _"I'm fine. I mean, I'll be fine. I'm not fine, but I will be."

"Did Dad already come talk to you?"

"Yeah."

He sighed. "You can tell me what you're feeling. You don't have to pretend like you're okay."

My lip trembled. "I bet I looked stupid."

"You didn't look stupid."

"People probably think I'm pathetic."

Flint pulled me towards him. "Stop worrying about what other people are thinking, Terra. You just focus on you."

"Flint, it's the Games!"

"I know, I know. But that doesn't mean you have to feel guilty for doing what anyone else would do. I'd cry too if they called my name."

I put my hands in my face and exhaled. "No you wouldn't."

"I would. Terra, I'm not gonna lie to you and say that everything's gonna be okay. This sucks, and I wish I could change it or something, but I can't. I can't, and I hate it. I hate seeing this happen to my sister."

Flint pulled me into a hug. "But whatever happens, I'll be in your quarter. Okay? You don't worry about what those stupid cameras do. I just want you to come home."

"Everyone wants to go home," I mumbled.

"I'm not them," he said. Flint's face darkened, his eyes flashing as if he'd condemn everyone else in this stupid game himself. "And neither are you. Whatever happens, just remember what's best for you."

I swallowed a sob before it could escape my lips and looked up at the ceiling to hold back another wave of tears. "Flint, I just –"

The door creaked open, and a Peacekeeper leaned in. "C'mon, man," he said, pointing to Flint. "I gave you an extra minute, but we gotta keep going. Let's go."

My brother didn't fight it. He got to his feet and pulled me up with him, whispering in my ear, "Whatever it takes, sis. Love you, Terra."

I held onto his hand for a fleeting moment, his fingers slipping through my grasp. Flint looked back one more time before he disappeared through the door. I was alone again – alone, a girl who had probably seen her brother and closest friend leave for the last time. All of the confidence Flint had tried to instill in me washed away as quickly as it had set in.

_Don't cry, don't cry – damnit_.

I wiped at my face as someone spoke outside my door. Another visitor – Dawn, maybe. This parade of faces that I'd likely never see again was making goodbye so much harder.

But the man who walked through the door wasn't someone I'd leave behind in District 5.

"I only need a few moments with her, sir," the man said to the Peacekeeper as he walked in. "But it shouldn't matter. After all, the visitor queue looks a little light this year."

Elan strode in, pulling his shiny cloak in through the door and shutting it with nary the lightest _thump_. My father had sat down in the chair and my brother had taken a seat on the couch, but my escort did not sat. He clasped his hands behind his back, lowered his head, and stared me right in the eye.

"You shouldn't wipe those tears away," he said.

I huddled into the side of the couch and replied, "Don't I – don't I get more time for visitors?"

"You have no more visitors, Ms. Pike."

"But – we're leaving already? Just give me a little more time, please – Glenn's gotta have visitors too."

"He had none, but I'm not rushing you. Not as long as I'm the one with the schedule."

I pulled my knees up to my chest and folded my hands on top of them. I'd seen escorts from other districts on previous Games showings, from the patriotic ones to the bubbly and excited ones to those who were just doing their jobs. Elan had always been a bit different, a bit more reserved – and up close, that reservation made the hairs on my arms stand up like Peacekeepers at attention.

"Am I supposed to be doing something?" I asked.

"Oh, no. Nothing forced, at least," he said. "But every year I stop in for a little talk before our departure. Sometimes a little guidance goes a long way, but Mr. Turner wasn't so receptive of my overtures. So, here I am."

"Every year?"

"Every year. Speaking of, I've never liked the paintings in this room. Too gloomy and dark. Dead leaders and politicians aren't very inspiring from my point of view."

"So what's your advice?"

"I'd resume crying, if I were you."

I furrowed my brow. _That's your advice_? "My father told me to look strong."

"Oh, I know. But your father is a man who likes the sound of his own voice, wouldn't you say?" he said. Elan creased his lips and added, "Not much of a goodbye, I think."

"Were you listening in on me?"

"Of course! I have a penchant for eavesdropping. It's a bad habit I'm in no hurry to kick."

I clenched my jaw. This man, this Capitol escort, made me mad. Who was he to interrupt my last time alone in District 5, even if I didn't have any more visitors coming to see me? For a man who said he wasn't rushing me, Elan certainly seemed like he was in a hurry to dunk me into the world of the Games.

"What do you want?" I said, wrapping my arms around my knees and pulling them tighter against my chest.

Elan looked hurt. "I'm an escort. I'm here to help."

"Why do you care?"

"My motives are just tributaries, Terra. They come from here and there and feed all into the larger whole. But I am not here to poke fun at you, and I am not here to ridicule you. When I tell you that I'm here to help my tributes, I'm telling you the most honest thing you'll ever hear leave my lips."

He finally sat down, sitting ramrod straight in the chair across from me and folding his hands on his knee. "Try to think of something sad," he said. "You might think you made a fool out of yourself after I called your name, but there's nothing sacred about looking strong. Not for you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Do you know how to fight? Are you a trained warrior or survivalist?"

"No."

"Are you proud to be representing District 5?"

"N- I mean, yes, but –"

"You're not. Perfectly understandable. But it's obvious that you're not, and fighting against that is a lot harder than simply picking a more suitable role to play."

I looked away and sniffed. "Aren't my mentors the ones who are supposed to talk about this kind of stuff?"

"They'll tell you the details I wouldn't," Elan said, leaning forward and planting his elbows on his knees. "But every victor has a narrative, and you began writing your story the moment I pulled your name from that bowl. The earlier you understand exactly what kind of game we're playing, the better."

"My brother just said to not worry about the cameras and stuff."

"Terra, please. He's seen life and the Hunger Games through the lens of District 5, and so have you. But the Capitol trades in half-truths and lies of omission. It's a machine you've never seen a real glimpse of. You're not fighting against twenty-three children in an arena. You're building a brand. There's a reason why every victor has one, and there's a reason why those tributes who lacked one are dead."

Elan stood up and strode to the door, turning back just before he grabbed the handle. "I'll give you a few more minutes before we leave for the train. Tears, Terra. It's a human look. It'd be a shame if I waste my efforts yet again on a story that ends too soon."


	4. Bombshells

Once the train started off from the rickety mud brick station up atop the desert flats, it took less than a minute before the canyon and every trace of the thriving town within it disappeared. Another minute and I couldn't see the giant windmills and algae towers that poked up through the canyon top. Five minutes after the train started off from District 5, it curved into a tunnel cut through a blood red mountain, pulling a shade over the portrait of the sandy desert flats and late afternoon skies tinted with flecks of gold.

Just like that, I'd left my home for the first, and possibly last, time. Fifteen years evaporated like a mirage.

"The dry heat never has agreed with me," Elan said, filling up a crystal glass full of water from a pitcher resting on a chrome-inlaid tray. He swallowed half of the contents in one gulp and swirled the rest around his glass aimlessly. "But District 5's quaint. Not so much clutter as in here."

"Clutter" was the last word I would have used to describe the lounge car. We'd left the heat and dust behind and stepped into a climate-controlled amalgam of everything that was the Capitol. Rose-tinted glass bulbs lit up above my head from a ceiling-mounted chandelier. Tables made of some glossy black wood lined the polished blue walls. Even the chair I sat in defied belief. I felt as if it would swallow me up in its cloud-like cushions. The combination of the opulence we'd walked into, the fresh spring-like scent that wafted through the air, and my exhaustion from the horrible twist the day had taken made my eyes feel heavy.

I could have fallen asleep on that train right then and never woken up. It was a much better fate than the myriad horrors awaiting me that flitted through my mind.

The train hurtled out of the mountain tunnel, shaking and rumbling as sunlight shined back in through the windows. For one moment it jolted me out of my thoughts as the car rattled with a dark, grating sound.

"They give us the worst train?" Glenn muttered next to me with a much darker voice than I'd expected. I'd barely paid him any attention since getting on board. Where my cheeks were still littered with rivers of tears, his eyes were bone dry.

"The least receptive train, maybe," said Elan. "Daud Mosely's twin of a train."

I sniffed. "Where is he?"

"Probably picking at the wall with a knife," my escort said. He shrugged and set down his glass. "I'll find your more sociable mentor for supper. The dining car's the next one towards the front. It's already getting late, so we'll eat in say…fifteen minutes. For now – Ms. Pike, Mr. Turner."

Elan nodded his head and ducked through the door to the next car. As soon as he had left, Glenn stood up and brushed dust off of his trousers.

"S'pose we should eat before we die," he muttered.

I frowned. "We have a chance," I said, more to convince myself than debate him.

"Doubt it," he said, shrugging. "Suit yourself. I'm rather just eat."

Glenn let the door slam behind him. I supposed he was being realistic. We were, after all, just two kids from District 5. It'd been twenty-two years since our district had sniffed victory. We weren't volunteers, we weren't trained or ready or prepared for this. I wanted to hang on to hope, to clutch something, _anything_ that could keep me going, but my future had faded with my home in the dust of the train's departure.

I pressed my hands to my forehead. How could Glenn even think about eating? How could he be so matter-of-fact about this?

Before I followed Glenn into the dining car, I stopped and placed my fingers on the window. The land I'd grown up with fell further and further behind me with each passing second. Maybe it was hot, maybe it was dry and dusty, maybe the summers brought towering sandstorms with the rainy season, but this desert was home. I'd seen the past Hunger Games. I could end up in foot-deep snow, a dense jungle, or an arena so terrifying I'd go insane. I might never see the warm southwestern sun again.

_Damn it. Damn everything. _

I balled my fist and pushed the door open. Elan and Finch hadn't arrived yet, but Glenn sat alone at the table, his palms stretched out and facing up, his head bowed. I stopped on a dime and started to back up to leave him alone, but he snapped his head up and looked back.

"Oh," he said, scooting his chair in. "You're quiet."

"I can leave. Didn't mean to bother you," I replied.

"Nah. Fuck it."

"Are you –"

"Just forget it."

I sat down across the wide dining table from Glenn, rubbing my hand over the polished auburn wood. There was more to Glenn than met the eye. I knew I needed to keep my eye on the Games, but at the same time, I wanted to know more about my district partner. We didn't have anyone but each other now – and our teams, but they weren't headed into the arena. Neither of us deserved to be alone in what could be our last days.

"I've never seen you around school," I said. I figured mentioning that I'd seen him standing on the edge of a cliff wasn't the best way to start a conversation.

He fingered the gleaming silverware set out before him, his thumb rubbing up and down his knife as if it were a comfort. "Haven't gone to school in a while."

_Great topic, Terra_. "Did you work at one of the plants?"

"Nah."

"What d'you do?"

"I got Reaped. I woulda volunteered if I hadn't."

My breath caught. _What?_

Before I had time to digest what he said, the door burst open again. A flash of red hair caught my eye, and a short, lithe woman strode in as if she were expecting distinguished guests. Finch Rivers carried herself with more confidence than anyone I'd ever seen in District 5. Now in her forties, she was a far cry from the cautious yet shrewd fifteen year-old who'd run circles around her adversaries back in the 74th Games. She'd accepted her place as a victor and had emerged long ago as the face of District 5 to the Capitol. Up close, the way she held her chin high and stood up without a hint of a slouch justified that position.

"Hey, guys," Finch said, sitting down in the chair next to me. Elan entered right on her heels. "I'm Finch. You probably know me."

She pointed to each of us: "Terra. Glenn. I'm good with names. Don't worry about thinking too far ahead right now. Elan, are they –"

The arrival of a quartet of red-robed avoxes interrupted her. I'd seen avoxes, the silent servants of the Capitol, in the corners of television broadcasts in the Capitol before, but watching them arrange a myriad of steaming plates of food without a single slip was almost artistic. They moved without a sound. If I hadn't been inundated with the heaps of browned meat, goblets of moist grapes and bright fruits, and trays full of sweet-smelling breads and biscuits, I would have missed them entirely.

"Always on schedule," Elan said, pouring himself a glass of water.

"No kidding," Finch said. "C'mon you guys, eat. It's not poisonous."

I poked at a biscuit with my fork. "Are…uh, they're probably showing the recap of all the Reapings. Are we supposed to watch that?"

Finch shook her head and placed the biscuit on my plate. "Forget about that stuff right now, Terra. You've got enough on your plate – well, not that plate. Seriously, eat. But you two have had enough Games action for the day. Let's just start slow, okay? I want you both to be alright before we get into all the details. We can cover what you need to know for tomorrow in the morning."

I had to give one thing to Finch: She knew how to take control of a bad situation. Her reputation as one of the smartest victors wasn't for nothing.

She wasn't kidding about the food either. The first bite I took of the biscuit overwhelmed my tastebuds with a scrumptious explosion. I abandoned my modesty, heaping as much onto my plate as I could. _Guess Glenn had a point_.

"So," Finch said, taking a bite of a biscuit and turning to me. "I want to know a bit more about you guys. What did you back home, Terra?"

I didn't expect her to be so forward right off the bat. Spearing at a globe of some leafy green vegetable, I said, "Just…work and school. And stuff."

"Yeah? Where'd you work?"

"Just the – the solar farms."

"Really? Smarty pants."

I blushed. "I dunno about that."

"I could never figure that stuff out," Finch said, inspecting a piece of red meat on her fork. "You have that on me."

For a victor, Finch had a remarkable way of making someone feel good about themselves.

"How 'bout you, Glenn?" she went on. "Same deal?"

He looked up. Glenn had already finished off nearly his entire plate. "Nah. Not really."

"Yeah? What do you do for fun back in the district?"

"Nothing. Much."

"Ah, that's life," Finch said. I caught her just as she glanced over at Elan, the mentor and escort meeting each other's gazes for a quick moment. That was what she was up to: She wasn't really interested in what we did for fun. She wanted to know what she had to work with without asking that very question.

Elan's advice in the Hall of Justice came back to me. Maybe Finch wanted to make Glenn and I feel at home, but we were both still on camera. Our audience was our team, but it was still an audience. _The earlier you understand the game, the better_.

"What d'you do?" I asked. Finch's compliment had given me a burst of confidence, and I wanted to get her on my side as fast as I could.

She looked surprised. "Me? I – huh, first time one of you guys has asked me that. I don't really have –"

"She fucks around and tries to sound smart."

I whirled around in my chair. Daud loitered by the door, resting up against wall with his arms crossed and wearing what I could only describe as a sack of potatoes.

"Never a better introduction in all the twelve districts," Elan scoffed.

"Only here for a bite," Daud said. He barged forward and cut in between Finch and I, grabbing a large yellow fruit in each of his hands.

Finch's lip curled. "You can sit down to eat," she said, her voice dropping an octave.

"Got a call to make," Daud said, retreating back to the door. "Just finished on the phone with Odair. Big Odair, not the little one. Said there's a…twist…coming in the arena this year."

A chill ran up my arm. _Twist?_

Finch looked as if she were ready to fight her fellow mentor to the death. "Daud, we can talk about this later, in private, when -"

"Finnick told you that?" Elan interrupted her.

Daud laughed with a sharp bark. "True, then? You know everything."

He slipped back through the door, peeling one of the fruits as he left. Our conversation died with the slamming of the door. Elan furrowed his brow, as if some great secret had just come out, while Finch was doing a remarkable job keeping her cool.

It was Glenn who cut through the awkward silence. "Think I'm gonna get out of here."

"You don't have to mind him," Finch said, closing her eyes and clenching her jaw. "He's not very tactful. You can stay and eat more."

"Nah. I'm fine."

She didn't argue as Glenn left, but ushered me to follow him out and cleanup for bed. I didn't argue. Something told me that we weren't supposed to know about the cryptic bomb Daud had just dropped on dinner.

"I'll take her to her room," Elan said, guiding me out of the dining room and leaving Finch alone to a lonely supper.

I didn't get more than a step into the lounge car before Elan stopped me. He shut the door behind him, made sure the door to the next car was closed, and poured himself another glass of water.

"Obviously you weren't supposed to know that," Elan said, swirling the water around. "But neither was Daud, nor Finnick Odair from District 4. Even the most renowned of victors don't receive inside knowledge on the Games, which tells that someone's leaking information intentionally."

I watched him as he paced along the wall. "That means," Elan added, "that you need to be doubly careful. Someone wants an extravaganza for the new president, and by the looks of things, only a fantastic tale is going to please them."

"Why are you telling me?" I asked. "Why me and not Glenn?"

"Oh, I will tell him," said the escort. "I'm an escort. It's my job to help one of you win and come home, and if he's receptive, I'll spend just as much effort on him as I do on you. I know you feel bad for the boy, but I don't think he's what you expect. For the downtrodden in the world, life isn't always worth fighting for."

He opened the door towards the rear of the train and said, "Be careful around cornered animals, Terra."

**/ / / / /**

_**+ Thanks for another upbeat review, ArtemisCarolineSnow! A lot of talk in these past two chapters, but more excitement's coming in just the next chapter with the arrival to the Capitol on the way! **_


	5. Surprises

_**+ Big thinks to ArtemisCarolineSnow for the ongoing reviews, and for everyone reading along!**_

**/ / / / /**

"The Games aren't your little plaything, Galan. They mean something. It's not just entertainment."

"You can stop standing on ceremony. They're games. I don't see what you can think they are besides entertainment, a little slice of fun and action to bring people out of their hollow lives for a few days."

Cyrus Locke raised his shoulders and frowned. The Head Gamesmaker, Galan Greene, had never struck him the right way, even if he had conducted the annual blood festival with a deft hand for six years. Maybe it was his casual arrogance about his running of the business. Maybe it was the spiky, inky tattoos that littered the man's bald skull and snaked down his thin arms, the ones Galan always kept bare to show off his body art. Or maybe it was the way he walked with a cool, swishing confidence, his chin raised high so that his eyes looked down on the rest of the crowd in the Capitol Forum as if he were some feudal lord deigning to dirty himself among the peasantry.

The less time he had to spend with this man, the better.

"They're Coriolanus Snow's games," Cyrus said. "The word tribute has significance this year."

Galan scoffed, "Coriolanus Snow's been dead for six months now, Cyrus. You should try living in the present."

"You owe everything you have to him."

"And you too, but that doesn't matter much now, does it? The dead are blind and deaf. Look over there."

Cyrus stopped and shielded his eyes from the hot morning sun with his hand. On the far side of the forum, where the wide asphalt square tapered off into an adjacent street leading to the Avenue of the Tributes, a black sedan with tinted windows hurried past a goggling crowd. The onlookers cried and cheered, throwing rainbow confetti at the car as it passed.

Galan laughed. "District 2's tributes headed off for a remodeling. Look at all the entertainment."

"Creon's not so happy about all of it," Cyrus mused. "I've done my best to convince him otherwise."

"He'll learn to like it. His father did. Let's get going, hm? I don't want to keep the lab geeks waiting on us for too long."

Galan ushered Cyrus towards a squat, gray, domed building at the far end of the two mile-long forum. The Capitol Science Center looked so out of place amid the hustle and bustle of the Forum, with its myriad stalls and storefronts selling anything and everything that money could buy. Out here, bright colors, screams of delight, and sweet aromas threatened to overload Cyrus's senses.

"You need to relax a bit," Galan said as the two men hurried past a crowd of giggling boys crowded about a cluster of street performers satirizing the past year's Hunger Games. "It's all good fun, and you might be getting more out of this year's contest than you think."

"Like what?"

Galan glanced around and leaned closer. "Good authority wants to keep closer tabs on the victors and the districts. This year's winner will be…working…much closer with all of us. Even with Creon."

"Good authority?"

The Head Gamesmaker smiled. "Good authority. There're a million ways to conscript a victor into jobs that need doing."

Cyrus felt heat rising in his gut. Someone else had dug their claws into the Head Gamesmaker, and he had a good idea just who it was.

For as warm and lively as it was out in the Forum, the Science Center was equally as cold and sterile. The bitter smell of antiseptic assaulted Cyrus as he pushed past a pair of white-cloaked lab technicians and walked into the Center's foyer. Slate-gray walls met him with blank expressions. An energetic buzz of chatter flitted through the air, from a trio of short, heavily-tattooed scientist types in one corner of the wide hall to a pair of young women with matching fuschia hairdos seated on a bench near the half-moon reception desk, but it was all a hum of confusion to Cyrus's ears. He didn't understand all the talk of _transplant_ and _subjects_ and _genotypes_ thrown around from lips to ears. The man left the nitty-gritty of the Hunger Games to those with bigger brains and smaller eyes.

Galan stopped him as they reached the reception desk. "Ah!" he cried, reaching out a hand to a gaunt man exiting an adjacent hallway that smelled of lemon with a hint of something foul. "No waiting around for you!"

The newcomer pulled up the sleeves of his black lab coat and shook the Head Gamesmaker's hand with a vigorous squeeze. "Well, you're pressing us for time. Games less than a week away…less than a week – Counselor Locke? Pleasant surprise. You here to check in on the project?"

"Project?" said Cyrus. He didn't shake the man's hand, but something about the scientist took him off guard. Cyrus had expected some stereotype of the lab technicians, a slouching, balding man obsessed with his work, perhaps. But while this man was no physical specimen with his slouched shoulders and blonde stubble that dotted his face in patches, he carried himself with the utmost confidence. His voice was as dark and brooding as distant thunderclaps. "Galan only told me I'd be interested in what this place had to show."

"Interested?" the scientist said. "Understatement of the 96th Games. I'm the chief scientist here, Varno Rensler. Mr. Greene has me working overtime just to see this through. As our new leader's right-hand man, it's best you do take a look."

He moved to lead the two down the strange-smelling hallway, but paused just before taking a step. "It's…I'm not sure what you're expecting, Counselor, but I think you'll be the one in for a surprise next."

"What're you concocting in here?" Cyrus said as the three headed down the hallway.

Varno waved his hand in the air. "This and that. It's science. We make miracles here and people on the street call it entertainment. Doesn't diminish the miracle."

"The Games don't need a miracle. Just a solid showing, no mistakes. It's important we get it right this year of all years," said Cyrus.

"We'll get it more than right," Galan murmured.

Cyrus folded his arms as the trio stepped into an empty elevator. The Head Gamesmaker's arrogance would get the better of him one day. For all he knew, the victor would be some meek fourteen year-old who got lucky. That'd hardly be much of a first victor for Creon Snow's new regime.

"I know what you're thinking," Varno said as the elevator rushed downward. His voice was little more than a whisper. "We're just making mutts. Mutts, what the districts call what grows and births down on the bottom floor. Mutts. But mutts are dumb things, things that don't think and things that don't feel. I have a better eye than that for what your contest needs, Counselor. Just…"

He frowned. "You might want to know going ahead of time that what we're making might seem a little…unnatural."

"And that means what?" Cyrus said.

The elevator doors opened, and chilly air rushed in between the doors. It wasn't the cold, however, that caused goosebumps to stand up on Cyrus's arms. It was the smell, the reek of things that were caught somewhere between death and life, things that other men may have called science, but to Cyrus smelled only…unnatural.

Varno smiled. "We'll give everyone something they haven't seen before."

**/ / / / /**

I gritted my teeth. I'd had enough of the cold air and the smell of antiseptic.

What in the double hells was taking so long? My trio of stylists had long since left this concrete-walled box they called a "styling ward." It'd been a hectic ride since this morning, when the train had pulled in between the gleaming skyscrapers of the Capitol before Elan had left Glenn and me in this horrible place.

I was grateful that my stylists had left after what seemed like an eternity of them scrambling like roadrunners about the room, grabbing tools and brushes and squawking to one another in their mockingbird voices. A million pricks and scrubs and prods from things only the Capitol and the three lords knew and I'd been abandoned here to shake and shiver, damp, naked, and confused.

All this in the name of "styling" for the chariot ride that night. Who knew looking presentable required a full-on bodily assault?

The paper gown I'd worn earlier lay crumped in a heap on the floor, covered in water and some grimy, shiny-looking substance. I wondered if Glenn was having as much fun as I was. I wondered if he even cared.

_Creak_.

The door squeaked open so slowly I imagined an earthworm was pushing it. But it was no worm: The tallest woman I'd ever seen sauntered in, her all-white, neck-to-ankle ensemble clinging to her paper-thin frame. Elan's appearance might not have seemed much different than any I'd known back home, but this woman was far from anything I'd seen in District 5. Tattooed-on hair seemed to spike up from her bald head. Tiny purple whorls of body paint spun around on the top of her hands and across her cheeks. Perhaps most startlingly, a pair of dark brown streaks drooped down from her eyes all the way to her jawline, as if she'd cried out some horrible abomination from deep within.

She didn't say a word as she approached me. Between her height and her drastic body art, I was too intimidated to say much myself – even as she yanked me up from my seat.

Like a cobra she circled me, eying every inch of my naked body and missing nary a thing. Her silence prickled my skin, and the way she stooped down to examine parts of me I'd never wanted examined made me want to sprint out of this hellish stylist center.

For all I knew, she was just some random passerby who'd decided to take a look.

Another near-eternity passed until finally the strange woman muttered, "It's too gangly. Not going to work."

I protested, but before I said two words, she clapped a floral-smelling hand over my mouth. My eyes widened. What in…

The woman pulled away and began scribbling notes on a computer tablet. "Let's see if it'll stay quiet long enough for me to work," she said to herself.

This wasn't what I was expecting out of my head stylist – or at least, I figured she was my head stylist. No introduction, no questions, not even a reference to me as a person. Was I just a thing to be dressed up and paraded around? "It, the tribute." That was me.

Another five minutes of silence dragged by before the woman hurried out of the room. Curious, I snatched her tablet off of the metal styling stand she'd left it on and flipped it over in my hand. I didn't know how to use this thing, but I did learn one thing from it: Stenciled on the back of the black cover read, "Property of Rhea Perrigo, chief stylist, District 5 contingent."

Rhea Perrigo. So she was my stylist – or at least, she was the stylist for "it." That wasn't comforting.

The door creaked open, and I tossed the tablet back on the stand. But it wasn't Rhea coming back in. A hand reached through the door, holding out a fresh blue paper gown. I grabbed it with a "thank you" and hurried to pull it in, eager to dress in _anything_ after hours of having everything bared.

"I'm fine without thanks," a familiar voice said from the other side of the door. "I just lunched with your compatriot. I'm guessing Ms. Perrigo hasn't fed you, or said more than one word to you."

I ripped the shoulder of my gown in surprise. My escort had a way of finding his way everywhere.

"Elan?" I said. "I'm half-naked."

"Only half," he said, shoving the door open and walking in with a tray full of steaming food. "Besides, I'm not so interested in your body as your stylist is. She won't be back for a while. Every year, the stylists take an hour or two for alterations to their designs. You should eat."

I wrapped my arms around my waist and eyed the food. "What is it?"

"The best of District 11," said my escort, taking a seat in one of the stylist chairs. "It wasn't cheap, so hopefully I'm making a good bet on you and Glenn. He wasn't very receptive to my words, but he did at least take my food. It's one thing I can do."

"Is he alright?" I said, taking my tray and picking at an orange. "He's quiet all the time around me."

"Oh, he's quiet around me, too," said Elan. "But I've come to…well…"

He scratched his nose and looked down. "I understand where he's coming from. My father was a Peacekeeper, after all."

"What?"

"If you win the Hunger Games, I'll tell you all about my story," he said. "But your story matters more at the moment. You'll be happy to know that your showing back in District 5 has made you one of the worst candidates on the betting boards. Last I saw two hours ago, your odds were twenty five-to-one."

I gulped. "Shit."

"It's not a bad thing. The favorites draw the attention early, but people grow tired of the same old, same old winning every year. The real supporters of the Hunger Games love surprises, and underdogs are the biggest."

He lowered his head. "Although, I think Ms. Perrigo has something planned for you tonight that will stand out. Something shocking, even."

"Shocking?"

"Play on words. Nobody with any class wants to see naked tributes out there tonight."

Elan leaned against the wall, his eyes half-closed yet still staring at me with a force much greater than his nondescript image conveyed. "I won't be able to see you again before tonight's parade, so work with the image you've made. Don't look flashy tonight. Timidity, shyness. You'd be surprised what can endear the hearts of the Capitol's vainest and wealthiest, and if we're looking for a surprise in the Games, you'll set up a nice contrast to a survivor in the arena. It's all an act."

"I don't know anything about the arena," I said, twisting my hands in my lap. "I just…I've seen the old Games, but that's it."

"Well, then that's something you'll need to work on," said Elan. "Your mentors will help you through skills, but you need to think beyond that. Finch and Daud may be good at what they do, but they're humans. Ms. Perrigo will help you tonight, but those two will help you through the arena. If you want to better your odds, you'd do best by making them want you to win."

"Don't they already?"

"Finch is a smart woman. She'll pick sides strategically, and as long as you show some initiative, you'll be fine in her book. But Daud is a tougher nut to crack."

"Like he really does a lot," I scoffed, hiking my knees up to my chest. "He's said as many as words as Rhea."

The tips of Elan's lips twitched. "Words might not be his thing, but gaining sponsorships are."

"Who would give him money?"

"I won't spill his secrets, but victors go to lengths far greater than those undertaken by you or me," said Elan. "Another story for a later date. But Daud is quite good at an extremely unsavory job. If I were Finch, I'd tell you that he's one of the best chances you have at improving your odds in the arena. "

Elan got up and brushed off his pants. "I'll get going before Ms. Perrigo comes back. You listen to your stylist today, and you stick to the path you've made so far. I told Glenn the same thing: If you're serious about going home, everything you do needs to further that goal. You're part of the Capitol now, Terra."


	6. Prying Eyes

What had she done to me?

I winced and glanced down at this…_thing_…Rhea had dressed me in as we rode an elevator down to the floor level of the Remake Center. My stylist must have been a bit more macabre than I thought. She'd covered me from neck to toe in a tight black-and-violet outfit that trailed a thousand string-like streamers behind me. It's as if she imagined me as some sort of shadow demon stepping out of a land of eternal night. I'd nearly gasped when I first saw myself in the mirror, with my eyes hidden beneath heavy dark makeup and my skin streaked with violent purple fault lines.

Whatever this ghoulish outfit had to do with District 5 was beyond my imagination.

"I hope they can do _something_ with my work this year," Rhea muttered as the elevator ground to a halt.

I frowned at my bare feet, covered in vivid violent paint. That didn't sound promising. Elan had stressed building an image for the Capitol, but who was going to throw money Glenn and I's way upon seeing this?

My doubts doubled when I saw my partner. He looked resigned to his fate with drooping eyelids and a wry frown that didn't match at all the bright white-and-violet ensemble he wore. It was as if his stylist had reversed his outfit's colors from mine except for the purple styling, with the bright white jumpsuit that covered Glenn from the neck down contrasting sharply with my own suit.

It didn't help that the cavernous garage of the Remake Center was filled with tributes who looked like far better representations of their districts than we did. A pair of stunningly attractive teens from District 4, each seemingly on the cusp of adulthood, wore aquamarine gowns of shiny scales and sinewy netting. The moving, grinding gears covering the tiny boy and lanky, empty-faced girl from District 3 looked outright dangerous in an impressive way.

What shocked me more down here, however, were all the tributes behind Glenn and I's chariot. So many of them looked as if they'd never sniffed a good meal in their lives. The almost skeletal boy from District 12 far at the back of the garage, covered in a simple robe smeared in soot and coal dust, could have disappeared into thin air at any time. I was afraid he'd fall into a pile of skin and bones if someone didn't feed him in the next five minutes.

How did that happen? District 5 wasn't a paradise, but most everyone had a bite to eat three times a day and a solid roof over their head, even if it was only sheltering a simple mud brick hovel hewn into the canyon walls. The two kids from District 10, on the other hand, couldn't hide their empty eyes and hollow cheeks under their cowboy outfits.

Shock – or morbid curiosity – at the sight of so many sickly-looking kids from the outlying districts made my gut churn.

"Hey."

I jumped at Glenn's remark. He watched me with a scrunched eyebrow, frowning as he added, "Probably shouldn't stare."

"I was just – just looking at costumes," I said. "Er, outfits. We look stupid."

"Won't matter soon," said Glenn.

What did that mean? I still couldn't figure out my fellow District 5 tribute, but I knew better than to probe. Doubtless he'd push me away, and even if he did open up to me by some chance, I slowly was growing more aware of the situation. We wouldn't be poorly-dressed kids standing around in a garage forever. Sooner or later one of us, at least, would be dead. It was a terrible thought, but I couldn't just ignore my lurking fear of what awaited in the arena for much longer.

I didn't think this dumb outfit would help my chances, anyway.

"Whoa, look at you! You look downright scary."

So much for pushing people away. The girl from District 4 sauntered up to me, her long orange hair swishing behind her. Compared to the kids from the outlying districts, she might as well have been a Capitolian, from her height to her silky skin to her clear, bright green eyes. What'd she want with me?

"Can I touch this?" she said, waving her hand through the streamers on my outfit. "Creepy. You look like you're gonna kill me."

The girl was chatty, that was for sure. I waved my hand in the air as I tried to think up something witty to say, eventually settling on: "I'm…uh, saving that for later."

She laughed, tilting her head back and half-closing her eyes like it was the funniest thing she'd heard in weeks. "I'm not gonna make you mad, then."

I shrugged. "Well…thanks. You probably wouldn't like me when I'm mad."

"God, finally someone wants to talk," said the girl. "Delfin was being so anal earlier."

"Who's –"

The boy from District 4 cut me off with a sharp cry from his chariot. "Tethys, get the hell over here. We're gonna go soon."

The girl, Tethys, sighed and rolled her eyes. "See? He's probably right though. See ya."

She paused after two steps. "What's your name? If I actually see you, it'd be weird just saying, 'Hey, girl,' and all."

The boy, Delfin, I guessed, gave me pause. He looked as if he wanted his partner to have nothing to do with me, and the way he scowled and narrowed his eyes, I got the feeling that _he _was the one who was going to start killing people in the garage. Why was there one of those sadistic screwballs in every Games?

"Terra," I said, backpedaling towards my chariot. "Just – bye."

_Way to end the conversation on a high note_, I thought. She probably thought I was an idiot. Considering that District 4's tributes trained every year for the Games, however, her partner would probably smash me like a bug if I tried to chat with her again.

_They don't want to talk with you anyway, Terra_.

"Making friends?" Glenn said lazily as I hurried up into our chariot's carriage.

_Funny joke_. "No. She just wanted to look at this thing I'm wearing. She didn't want to be friends."

"She looked like she did."

"She laughed at me."

"She laughed at whatever you said. Shit, you can make friends."

He worried me. It wasn't anything about the Games, no: Something about the way Glenn stared off into the distance as he said that, his gaze unfocused and every facial muscle besides his mouth still as a statue, prickled my skin.

"Glenn, are you okay?" I asked, abandoning my quest to push him away before the arena.

"I'm a little hungry."

"I mean about the Games. Back when you said you were going to volunteer…"

"Shut up about it."

"What?"

The garage's great iron doors creaked open and stopped me before I could get angry at Glenn's rebuke. I forgot all about the two from District 4 and Glenn's problems in a split second. As soon as our chariot lurched to a start, my outfit transformed from gloomy to terrifying.

Lighting spilled down the strands behind my dress. Violet, crackling electric snakes hissed and spat with sparks that bounced on the ground behind our chariot. I nearly jumped off and pulled my clothes off right there and then, and seeing Glenn's outfit doing the same thing didn't comfort me.

"Gah!" I yelped, pawing at my outfit.

Glenn grabbed my arm. "Just effects," he said. "Nifty."

"I don't want to get electrocuted!"

"We're supposed to get killed later, not now. It's just an effect. Power. Electricity. Y'know."

"It doesn't look like that back home!"

"Yeah, people are stupid. Just sit tight. Well, stand tight."

Rhea could have at least told me my dress would light up like a storm cloud! Every two seconds I glanced back at the sparking, crackling strands behind me, afraid the lighting would creep up my neckline and jolt me halfway down the avenue rapidly growing in front of us.

The scene out on the street shocked me even more.

Ten thousand – no, a hundred thousand – spectators dressed in every color in the rainbow shouted and screamed, like one superorganism smiling and applauding the show. The hulking towers lit up in their neon lights, the white spotlights shining off of the mountaintops around the Capitol, the baritone roar of the crowd as each new chariot rolled out into view – it all threatened to knock me off our carriage in sheer overwhelming awe.

I couldn't smile, couldn't wave. My breath caught in my throat and I looked up at the imposing Training Center rearing up before us in a stupor. Everything here was supersized, from the buildings to the cheers of the crowd.

For a moment, just a moment, I let myself believe some of those cheers were for me.

I hardly heard the words of the tiny men up on a high platform as the chariots circled the end of the avenue. Everything had turned into a blur by then, a great, gray haze that pounded me endlessly with a hundred decibels. My legs wobbled. I'd forgotten we were even on screens across the entire nation now, not just contained here in this little bubble world that I'd already lost myself in. Would my brother even recognize me in all this?

The thought sobered me as our chariot wheeled towards the gaping maw of the Training Center ground floor. This whole great cacophony had swept me up so fast that I'd barely even recognized what was going on any more. We were still in the Hunger Games. _Keep your head on straight, Terra_.

Right. I squeezed my eyes shut to clear my head from the haze and smoky residue left behind by countless fireworks.

Tethys and Delfin chatted like good friends in the chariot in front of us. So much for animosity – although when I looked around, I noticed they were the only pair who seemed to enjoy each other's company. The two kids from District 2, a brawny boy with hair the color of ash and a wiry, broad-shouldered girl, had opened up an entire ocean's worth of space between each other on their chariot.

I stared at them as our chariot slowed to a halt inside the Training Center garage. The two from District 2 allied almost every year, along with 1 and 4. If that wasn't the case this year, well…the thought gave me a burst of confidence.

Mentors fanned out around the garage, and Finch jogged up to our chariot as I stepped off the carriage. She had a bright smile on, but when she got closer, I saw creases lining her eyes.

"Good job, guys," she said. Beneath her breath, she added, "Need to talk to your stylists."

I grimaced. "Was it bad?"

"Nah, it's fine," she said hurriedly. "We can work things out. We'll talk about what's coming up in the next couple days when we get upstairs. C'mon. If we stay here too long, we'll let everyone else get a good look at you two. Gotta avoid that."

Glenn made a point of walking on the other side of Finch as we cut a path through the crowd to get to the elevator. Was he that mad about my question? I knew I should've avoided the issue, but I couldn't help but want to know why he was being so elusive.

We beat all the other districts to the elevator at the rear of the giant garage, but we had company before the doors could close. A golden-haired, stunning-looking man slipped his hand inside the doors before they could close, flashing a smile of perfect white teeth at Finch before ushering in a pair of tributes after them. From the girl's long, fluffy blonde hair to the boy's lean muscles to their gaudy emerald dresses, I could tell who they were: District 1.

"Just one floor. We can share," their mentor said, sliding up next to Finch. She eyed him with a frown and scooted away. "Not having much fun?"

A massive hand slammed the inside of the elevator as the door started to close again. In strode Daud, reeking of some flowery-smelling perfume and clutching a stick of something meaty in his hand.

The District 1 mentor snorted.

"What?" Daud snarled as the doors closed.

"What? Nothin'," the other man said.

"Whole lot of fuckin' nothin' comes dribbling out of your lips."

The other mentor crossed his arms and grinned. As the elevator stopped after a floor, he said, "Funny guy. Wish you had a younger mentor with you. Finch is a bit old for me."

He waved as the door closed. Daud spat on the ground and said, "Gloss thinks he's so fucking special. Goddamn bootlicker."

"The point is not to draw too much attention," Finch sighed.

"We could try something different," Daud said.

"No," she replied. "You see those two from 2? They looked like they wanted to kill each other. Maybe it was just a passing thing, maybe not. Either way, we can let that boil over and see what's what. Better if they drum up tension against each other. Maybe the usual volunteer alliance is only five rather than six this year. Any little advantage is good for us."

I felt proud of myself for guessing that as well. Finch had a point: I didn't exactly want to become everyone's top target.

"Wasn't paying much attention to 2," said Daud.

"Did you pay attention to anything?" Finch said.

"You know damn well what I was doing."

Finch fell silent. I didn't know what the other mentor had meant, but given the awkward quiet that dominated the elevator as it rose the last two floors to our compartment, I felt it was another subject I should avoid.

"Home sweet home," Daud muttered as the doors opened.

I caught a gasp in my throat. The fifth floor was a sprawling apartment, filled with gleaming chrome furniture in the dining room, shiny wood paneling on the walls from floor to ceiling, and enormous glass windows that opened up a look onto the busy Capitol streets below. It made my fancy bedroom on the train look like a pauper's quarters.

"You two," Finch said, turning to Glenn and me. "Go get washed up; take whatever bedroom you want. We'll take it easy tonight and go over the serious stuff tomorrow morning. Off you go."

Glenn just nodded. He hadn't said a word since our outfits had lit up, and I felt guilty as we trudged down the hall. As soon as we were out of Finch's and Daud's sight, I stopped him.

"Glenn, I –" I started, stumbling over what to say. "Look, I want us to be okay with each other."

"What?" he said.

_Lord, I'm going to sound like an idiot_. "If there's something bugging you, you can tell me. We only have a little time until the arena, and we don't really have anyone else."

He curled his lip and furrowed his brow. "Why would I want to do that?"

"I'm trying to help! Something's bugging you."

"Don't try to get in my head. Don't act like Finch."

"What is your problem?"

"Oh, yeah, yell at me for having some privacy. Great."

Heat flushed my face. I wanted to know more about him, but at the same time, I wanted someone to be there who I could talk to – someone who wasn't just a mentor in what could be my last days. Glenn's aloofness only made me press harder. "I just want to talk! You don't have to be all angry about it."

"No, you're just really nosy," Glenn said. "Is this what you and your friend were talking about when you were spying on me in the canyon yesterday before the Reaping?"

I swallowed hard. _Shit_.

"You want to help?" he said, opening the door to the nearest bedroom. "Help yourself and stay the fuck out of my life. You wouldn't like what's in it, anyway. Go have fun prying into someone else's mind before we both die, Terra."

He slammed the door in my face. My Hunger Games were not off to a good start.


	7. Witness

_**+ Huge shout-out to ArtemisCarolineSnow and Radio Free Death for the great reviews, and thanks to everyone reading and taking an interest in the story! You guys are the best. I do promise that the parallel storylines - Terra's journey and the political drama going on around the Capitol and the districts - will converge eventually. It's not just me rambling.  
**_

**/ / / / /**

The Capitol was an artistic masterpiece at sunrise.

The golden mountain sun had just crested the rocky peaks surrounding the city when I awoke. Soft sunlight bathed the Capitol's wide roads, forcing back the shadows from the night into shady alleyways and lonely side streets. The firefly lights of the skyscrapers blinked off one by one. Late-night stragglers, little more than sluggish ants from my window on the fifth floor of the Training Center, dotted the avenues here and there, but at this hour, the city was at rest. It was too early for the business of running a nation, too late for the revelry that buzzed on every bright corner and in every smoky back room throughout the night.

I wasn't happy to be here, to be facing the Games and an inevitability that awaited me – either victory or death. It terrified me. But this city…this city was an amazing place, even with the shadow that hung over it for a few weeks every summer.

The Training Center was quiet. I was glad for this kind of silence, and not the awkward lull that had hung over the dinner table last night between Glenn and me. I blamed myself for that: He might have overreacted, but maybe I shouldn't have pushed to find out his secrets. In these kinds of times, who knew what was going through his head that a stranger didn't need to know.

Besides, I couldn't focus on that today. Today was training day, and today the reality of the Hunger Games stepped into the spotlight.

Something rustled out in our apartment's common area as I stepped out of my bedroom, clinging a velvet-soft robe around my shoulders. I shuffled down the hall, careful to stay quiet. Finch's snores reverberated from the room to my left. I didn't stay unheard for long, however.

"If you're trying to sneak up on me," Daud called from the commons. "You could use a little practice."

My mentor faced the window out in the den, tightening the straps of a leather vest around his waist. Golden sunlight reflected off of his bald head, and his beard looked far more ragged than it had been the day before. He turned towards me, and from the way the navy blue bags under his eyes carved shadowy depressions into his weathered face, he looked as if he'd barely slept.

He pursed his lips and yanked on a strap. "It wasn't too bad."

"I wasn't trying to sneak around," I said, flopping down on a couch and lying my head on a pillow.

"Maybe you should try. You know the best way to kill a man? Make sure the first time he sees you is when he takes his last breath."

Daud swore as he tightened another shoulder strap on his vest. I wanted to ask him questions, questions about what he was doing, what _I _needed to be doing, and so many other things, but after Glenn's chilly response, I held back. Elan told me to get him on my side, and I wouldn't jeopardize that to satiate my curiosity.

"Training today," said Daud, pulling on a tight-fitting shirt over his vest. The number seventy-two was emblazoned in scarlet on the shirt – his original Games. "Listen to what Finch tells you. She knows her shit. But don't trust one of those fucks from District 1 if they try to talk to you. Tell the boy that so he knows, too."

"What about 2 and 4?" I murmured, picking at a loose thread in the couch cushions.

Daud pursed his lips and flexed an arm. "Nothin' wrong with them."

"Aren't they all trained for this stuff? Win at all costs, and whatever?"

"Sort of. They ain't bad people, though."

"So what, the people from 1 are?"

Daud laughed. "Yeah, that's right. Gloss thinks he's man's fucking gift to the Sun, the Moon, and the Flame. Little bastard hasn't worked a day since he won."

That my mentor was spiritual at all surprised me much more than his bias against District 1. I knew he'd turned to alcohol since his victory, what with his coming into my family's cantina every other day, but imagining the brawny man sitting in the pews of the Church of the Triad back home struck me as odd. It wasn't my thing, but for the poor and downtrodden of District 5, the church was a ray of light in the darkness – literally, according to their words. Where did my mentor fit in with that?

"Are you leaving before breakfast?" I asked as Daud tromped off towards the elevator.

He nodded. "Unlike Gloss, I'm actually going to work. Hopefully I'll be back by dinner."

My mentor disappeared with the elevator car, leaving me with more questions than answers. I supposed he was getting a jump start on gathering sponsorships, as Elan had said, but who in the Capitol was up this early? It looked as if the man was getting ready for battle rather than preparing for entertaining clients. Somehow, the heavy leather vest didn't seem like the city's latest fashion trend.

Finch wandered out a half-hour later, looking as if she'd slept in fits and starts herself. "Couldn't sleep?" she said, slumping onto a chair across from me. "At least it's a nice morning."

"I slept fine," I said. "I just get up early."

She smiled. "Well, that's a good habit to have. You get more done when the sun's up. Did Daud leave already?" When I nodded, she sighed and dropped her head back onto the cushions. "Great."

"Elan told me he's good at getting sponsors," I said, my curiosity finally getting the better of me."

"He is. I worry about him sometimes, but…right now, we need to worry about you and Glenn a little more."

Finch shifted in her seat and rubbed the back of her neck. She grimaced and said, "Look, Terra, there's something you should know about the Games. I talked to Glenn about this last night after you'd already gone to sleep and he was still tossing and turning, but…the kids who win don't often win by accident. There's some luck in the Games, but there's more that determines who wins."

"It's just the last person standing," I said. "It always is."

"Yeah, but how that person comes to be…is…the Capitol needs something out of every winner, Terra, and our current Head Gamesmaker, Galan Greene, understands that better than most people. Everyone who wins has a certain image around them. A brand, if you will. One thing above all else they're known for, something that can sell to the Capitol crowds. If I mention, say, Finnick Odair on the streets to a random person, they'll know him for his charm, the whole Bad Boy package. He was like that in the Games, too, and the audience ate it up. It's been like this forever."

"Elan mentioned something about that."

"Right, he's in all the right circles. He won't be back 'til this evening, by the way. But that's why I wasn't happy with your outfit yesterday. It didn't really go with what we're trying to do with you."

"What's that?"

"Look, I'm guessing you don't know how to swing a sword, or that you've been striking out into the desert and shooting rattlesnakes with a bow or anything in your free time back home. So, instead of painting you as a warrior or fighter, I want you to know these Games better than anyone else. You need to keep an eye on the other kids down in training today, even more than you need to go around the stations learning things. Learn who everyone is. Watch what they do. If Elan, Daud, and I can make an image of you as the cleverest tribute in the field and the one to outthink everyone else, we have a solid foundation to work with."

I bit my lip. _Not sure how well that's going to work_. Sure, I did well at school, but outsmarting kids – some of them of them trained for this – in the arena was a whole different beast.

"I don't think I'm really that smart," I said.

"That doesn't matter. It just matters what people believe."

"They're not going to believe it if I can't do it!"

"I know it's hard, but you have to try. It's more than just any normal year, Terra, it's…" said Finch, pausing and letting her voice trail off. "Most of the other mentors aren't thinking like this, but there's a new leader of Panem, and he's not like the old President Snow. He's serious and isn't so into the Capitol spirit of the Hunger Games, according to Elan. If the Head Gamesmaker wants to impress the new Snow, he won't back some sex symbol or brute as a winner. He'll back someone who can prove themselves useful."

That last line shot an icy arrow into my heart. _Useful_. Forget mentoring tributes and living happily in the Victor's Village. I need to have a _use_.

"Wouldn't someone pretty or strong be more useful?" I said, glowering at my feet and digging my chin into my knee.

"No," said Finch. "That'd sell to the crowd, but clever can sell, too. It worked for me. And better, someone who's observant, someone who can understand their challengers well, is someone who a new president just six months into his reign needs."

She rubbed a hand over her mouth and gazed off into dead space. "I know it won't be easy, Terra. This never is, and this year's so much different because of the circumstances here in the Capitol. The Games are going to test you. You're gonna get thrown through every kind of hurdle you can imagine. But if you and Glenn can just stick with us, well…maybe we have a better shot than usual this year of getting one of you two home in one piece."

I didn't know how much of a shot that was, but I took her advice to heart when I rode the elevator down to the bowels of the building to begin training a few hours later. Without the makeup and gaudy outfits of the day before, so many of the other kids who filed down into the cavernous concrete gymnasium looked even worse for wear. They weren't killers or fighters. I knew the Games were necessary, and I knew I had to fight for myself now – but how was I supposed to kill someone like the skinny, olive-skinned boy with a "3" patch stitched onto the arm of his ash gray training uniform, a worried look plastered on his face as a Gamesmaker read out our rules for the day?

The Games looked a lot different up close. When the dandelion-haired boy from District 1 trotted off to the archery station and hit a target's bullseye with his very first shot, the grandeur of the day before didn't seem so grand.

_Keep your eyes open, Terra. Watch. Learn._

A station dedicated to camouflage sat ignored at one end of the gym as my fellow tributes rushed off here and there to spear-throwing stations or shelter-making lessons. I fought my instinct to run off to one of the more practical stations and shuffled over to the camouflage set-up, where a stooped attendant with graying hair and a black circle tattoo on his cheek seemed surprised by his visitor.

"Ah!" he yelled, nearly knocking over a carton of thick scarlet goop. "Someone with half a brain this year! Where you from, girl? Ah, 5. They need to color-coordinate you guys, or something. So, your mentor tell you to learn how to blend in?"

I gave him a half-smile and shrugged. "Something. I just want to learn."

"And a good choice of learning," said the instructor. "When all those schmucks piss their pants in a fight, you'll be avoiding it entirely. When the first time your opponent sees you is when he's taking his last breath, you're a winner."

_Funny. Same thing Daud said_.

The station teacher turned out to be much more than I'd estimated at first glance. Not only did he teach me the value of smearing mud on my pale skin in the dead of a dark night, but he also pointed out ways to stay quiet and stick under the shadows when another tribute was on the prowl. More and more, I was getting the impression that caution, not the fighting talent that had helped so many victors before, would be my best ally in the arena.

But I was also keeping my eyes on what else was happening in the gym. The two models from District had buddied up to the lithe girl from District 2, but their alliance had stopped there. Delfin, the boy from District 4 I hadn't liked, kept pulling Tethys away from anyone she tried to talk to after a minute or so. While they stuck together, the looks Delfin kept throwing the way of the District 1 kids told me that they weren't on such good terms.

Then there was the boy from District 2. For such a powerfully-built kid who looked much more like an adult than a teen, he sure didn't show off. Through the first hour I was working on camouflage, the boy stuck to tying intricate knots at a station halfway across the gym. Finch was right about this year's group from the favored districts – they weren't as close as I'd seen in past years' Games.

But given the pinpoint accuracy the boy from District 1 fired those arrows with, or how Delfin swung a spear around his body like it was an extra arm, I didn't know how much that would improve my odds.

**/ / / / /**

The mosquito buzzed off into the salty morning air, its annoying hum lost amid the crashing of waves against the dock.

It wasn't actually a mosquito, of course. The miniature drone only looked like a tiny insect zipping around aimlessly in the warm Pacific breeze. Buried in its steel face was a camera and a recorder, picking up everything that a snoop would need to know.

Arrian de Lange fit the bill.

He was a man who fit in well in District 4, with his long strawberry-blonde hair and his loose turquoise shirt that hung limply around his trim waist. With his iron biceps and a small scar running along his chin, he looked like any young fishing hand on one of the great boats that hauled in the district's daily bounties. He, however, had another catch in mind: Information. His client in the Capitol had offered to pay well for incriminating evidence on one of Panem's brightest stars.

Arrian plugged a pea-sized speaker into his ear and pulled out a tablet computer from his backpack. A few button presses brought him a clear video feed from his drone as it buzzed past an iron gate. The words "Victor's Village" flew past, and two dozen two-story houses, shining with fresh white paint unblemished by the salty air, jumped up in the video.

Right on target. The mercenary had programmed his bug to find a very specific victor in the Village, one who had avoided ever returning to the Capitol as a mentor. Her husband, and now her son, weren't so fortunate.

Even in her early forties, Annie Odair was still a beautiful woman in a haunting sort of way. Her bushy hair had thinned and spider web creases lined her forehead, but her green eyes still brightened as a holographic screen in the Odair household's den sprung to life with a flurry of bright dots of light. Arrian leaned forward over his monitor and wedged his ear speaker in just a bit further as Finnick Odair's face cleared on the monitor.

_It's about time to go about your business, isn't it, Finnick?_ Arrian thought.

"Hi," Annie said, folding her hands in her lap. She didn't smile. She looked anything but happy to see her husband a thousand miles away. "Is everything going alright?"

If Annie still had hints of beauty, her husband had clung to every speck of the handsome face that had won over the Capitol. His bronze hair looked just as it had when the victor had stepped out of the arena more than thirty years ago.

"I've only got a few minutes to talk," Finnick said with a shrug. "Tell me about you, first."

Arrian groaned. He let his eyes wander about the empty dock as the two victors delved into idle chatter for a minute. It was quiet out here in the absence of the trawlers that had left before the sun had risen. He had only the long green grasses above the beach and the cawing seagulls fighting for food on the dock's wooden planks for company.

"Finnick," said Annie in a worried voice, bringing Arrian back from his sightseeing. "Are you…are they still…"

Finnick frowned and sighed. "Yeah. I'm scheduled to meet with someone in a half-hour. That's why I'm making our chat quick today."

Annie let out a sob. "Hey," Finnick said, putting on his best attempt at a smile. "It's alright. Annie, it's alright. It happens every year. I'm gonna come back soon. We're gonna be fine."

"I know," she said, cupping a hand over one ear. "It's just…they're making Drake do it too, aren't they?"

Finnick's face sagged. For a split second, he looked every year of forty-five. "It's his first year…"

"No!"

"Annie, I tried. I tried to get them to leave him alone, but –"

"He's our son!"

"I know, I know –"

Annie cupped her hands over ears and leaned forward, rocking back and forth on the couch. _Give me something_, Arrian thought. _Come on_.

"I hate them for what they're doing," Finnick admitted. "All this crap and they're bringing Drake into it, too. I'd tell everyone in the Capitol to take a hike, the idiot Gamesmaker and the new President and everyone, but I can't fight them Annie."

"Why not?"

"Annie, we've talked about this."

She clenched her eyes shut and nodded, tears pouring down her cheeks. "I know. I just want to leave. I want to leave this place. All of it."

"Annie…"

"I just want to leave."

Finnick glanced over his shoulder. "I've got to go. We'll talk tonight after everyone's asleep, okay? Just hang on. Everything's gonna be fine, I promise."

_It sure will be_, Arrian thought, grinning and reeling the drone back from the Odair living room. Finally! He'd wanted for Finnick to say something dumb, something that could rile up the more paranoid of the Capitol. Bingo. He could play with that footage and make it sound worse than it did, given how much he'd already picked up from Annie and Finnick's conversations over the past two days.

_Why they don't just bug their houses all the time is beyond me_, thought the mercenary as he slid his tablet back into his pack. _A few high-up idiots are suspicious about some of the victors? You shouldn't need me to dig up some dirt on them._

"What are you doing?"

Arrian spun. A little girl watched him from twenty feet away with wide green eyes. She clutched a miniature wooden fishing rod in one hand, her other playing with her short auburn hair. Had she seen any of that?

One couldn't take chances. "Just preparing a gift. You want to come see it?" asked Arrian. When she hesitated, he ushered her over with one hand. "Come closer. I'll show you."

He slid his other hand behind his back as she trotted nearer. One hand extended an invitation, but his other closed around a leather grip.

"Right down here," Arrian said. "See?"

In one rapid move, he snatched the girl by her shoulder and thrust a dagger into her neck. Her eyes bulged and she choked on blood, gurgling her shock. Arrian shoved her off the dock and into the water before her eyes glazed over. She was as good as dead.

Unlike the Hunger Games, these games couldn't afford witnesses.


	8. Anxiety

**_+Big thanks to lemonofweirdness for the review/fave/follow!_**

**/ / / / /  
**

_Grey-eyed District 10 girl knows her plants. Black-haired District 7 boy is stronger than he looks and is good in a fistfight. Skinny District 3 boy…ah, shit._

I rubbed my eyes. Not a day and a half into training and already I was stumbling over what the other kids knew and at which stations they'd struggled. How did Finch expect me to keep tabs on all of them? Outside of Glenn and the two from District 4, I didn't even know their names.

My own attempts to pick up skills hadn't gone so well, either.

My palms chafed after my fourth failed attempt to start a fire. The wooden dowel I'd been drilling with to coerce an ember out of a wooden plank hadn't done much besides wear my arms out. A sad little hole in the wood looked back at me with the same sort of emptiness gnawing away at my self-confidence. I sat down in frustration, watching across the gym as the girl from District 1 launched a javelin with perfect aim into a plastic dummy's stomach thirty yards away. She made it look easy time after time. Why couldn't I even start a damn fire?

"Keep trying," said the station's instructor, a middle-aged woman with deep violet hair who smelled of an unpleasant cross of fresh flowers and stale milk. "You'll get it."

I gritted my teeth and ground the dowel into the wood for a fifth time. Somehow, this seemed a lot easier back home using a lighter or matches. Maybe the Cornucopia in the arena would be filled with matches, or the arena itself would be on fire. Then I wouldn't have to be doing this inane drilling motion over and over again, trying to spark a stupid little ember that probably wouldn't survive more than a few seconds.

Great. Great job, Terra. Now I could go freeze to death before someone came and killed me in a few days. Great.

I glanced over at the hollow-cheeked boy from District 12, who had no trouble getting a steady trail of smoke wafting from his chunk of wood a few feet away. He sat cross-legged on the floor, his calves looking no thicker than the small log he was sawing away at, but malnourishment sure hadn't stopped him from mastering a skill I was failing over and over again at.

After a few futile minutes, I laid my stick down and grabbed my forehead with both hands. This was not working. Even Glenn seemed to be getting the hang of training: Across the gym, my district partner actually smiled as he boxed with a sparring instructor. I hadn't even tried getting a hand on a weapon unit, particularly as the bigger volunteer kids had dominated those stations the past day. I was running out of time and running into a wall.

The boy from District 12 looked over with a worried expression. Frustration was pushing me close to tears, and I looked away before he could get any ideas. He probably thought I was an idiot, nothing more than something to be pitied. _Look at her,_ I imagined him thinking. _She won't last the first day. I hope someone puts her out of her misery quickly or she'll end up one of those girls who cries for their parents in short little pants while starving to death._

"That's not really a great way to do that."

I froze. He'd walked over with his own sticks and sat down next to me, laying them out beside my own poor attempts. "See?" said the boy, holding his sawing stick perpendicular to his log. "When you rub it like you were doing, it makes it harder. If you just saw it like this it's simpler."

My voice caught in my throat as he furiously rubbed away at his wood, easing a wisp of smoke out in less than a minute. I was thankful for the help, but I felt my face grow hot and my chest tighten. What if the kids from District 1 were right behind me, watching and picking me out as an easy target? _She can't even light a fire; she needs the skinny boy from District 12 to help her…_

"It's easy," the boy said, missing my embarrassment. "Just takes a lil' getting used to."

I nodded, but I couldn't meet his gaze. I didn't know why this always happened to me. Any hint of friendliness sent my blood pressure skyrocketing, and I wanted nothing more than to go running for a little corner to be alone.

The boy from 12 wasn't getting it. "I'm Ember," he said. "You're from 5?"

I bit my tongue. "Yeah. I'm Terra, but I should go. Training and stuff."

"Wait, I didn't mean to push you."

"No – I mean, thanks. But I need to go. It's almost time for stuff. Lunchtime. Almost."

I blushed as I hurried away towards the center of the gym, feeling his empty eyes watching me my retreat. At least I'd been right about lunch: I only stood around watching the boy from District 2 fiddle with a fishing rod for three or four minutes before the cafeteria bell sounded. I bolted out of the gym as fast as I could go, slipping through the wide doors to the barren, concrete-walled cafeteria ahead of the rest of the kids and filling a plastic plate with glistening orange sweet potatoes before the two tiny kids from District 9 had even walked in.

At least in here I could sit alone and feel like everyone else. Only a few of the other tributes had company as they settled down at the sterile-looking beige tables scattered around the cafeteria. Tethys and Delfin chatted nonstop near the doors, and a single table over, the two immaculately made-up kids from District 1 laughed at some inside joke. I was surprised the girl from 2 hadn't joined them, considering that I'd seen her tagging along in that budding team over the past day and a half.

She wasn't looking to talk alliance plans, it seemed. Instead, she'd brought trouble with her into the cafeteria.

The girl gripped her meat-and-vegetable-loaded plate as if it threatened to jump away from her, and she argued with her district partner with a harsh hiss and narrowed eyebrows. "Enobaria fucking said to stick together," she snarled at the brutish boy. "I don't know why you have to be so goddamn antisocial."

"Just leave me alone," said the boy. He wasn't angry. From the way he frowned with just the corners of his mouth, he looked like a wolf trying to avoid a yipping Chihuahua biting at its heels.

"I've tried inviting you to join us," the girl said, freeing a hand so she could swing it through the air as if she were swatting flies. "I tried getting you to show off a bit. You're a big guy. Why do you have to just sit there at the dumb stations like you're bored?"

"I don't want to do that other stuff."

"You're gonna fucking die."

"I don't want that, neither."

"Why don't you get over yourself, Acheron?"

"I just wanna be left alone."

The girl sneered at him and dashed off to join the two from District 1. I felt a pang of sympathy for the boy, Acheron, as he watched her go, his shoulders slumped and his wide mouth agape. After a few moments, he lumbered off to a table in the far corner of the cafeteria, leaning over a steaming pile of mushy green vegetables and picking at his fingernails from time to time. He'd volunteered, but I didn't think he'd done it for the same reason that the other five from the favored districts had.

I didn't get time to dwell in my thoughts, however. I hadn't expected anyone else to approach me after I'd run away from Ember, but especially not the one person I'd butted heads with here in the Capitol: Glenn.

My district partner tossed his empty plate onto the table and flopped down into the seat across from me, leaning on his elbows and letting out a long sigh. "This is kinda stupid," he said after a pause. "Who the hell learns things after two or three days of trying them out for the first time?"

I didn't answer. It was a good question – he had a habit of seeing past the face of the Games, really – but I wasn't ready to start talking considering that we'd barely spoken since after the parade.

"Are we really gonna do this?" he said. "I probably shouldn't have gotten pissy at you couple nights ago, but this has all been a bit much. Someone trying to get to know me was a little weird."

"This is probably a bad time to do that," I whispered.

"Guess so. You sprinted away from that kid at the fire station like he had measles."

I curled my left hand into a fist under the table. "At least you're still getting pissy at me."

"Just sayin'. He looked like he was trying to help. Every time I look over at you in the gym, you're just standing around at stations and half-assing stuff, looking around and watching everyone else. I mean, I get this is all a joke too, but you're being really obvious about it."

"Finch told me to watch everyone."

"Oh, so this is a dumb strategy. Do you even want to go home?"

"Everyone does."

"Not really," he said, crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair almost to the point of falling backward. "Do you really care about home? I mean, what's really waiting for you back in the district?"

"There's just…" I stuttered. "There's…my family and stuff."

"Stuff? You sound really convinced."

"Why are you even bugging me?"

He shrugged and glanced around at the other tributes. "Guess I feel the need to talk, considering that I don't have many more chances to do so. You said you wanted to get to know me. If you're still serious after all this training bull is over, then we can talk. Family and stuff ain't here, after all."


	9. Preparing Tributes

_**+Thanks for another great review, ArtemisCarolineSnow!**_

**/ / / / /**

_Five_.

I should've known I'd flub training. My mentors' ideas had drained out of my mind as soon as I'd stepped into the gym all alone before the Gamesmakers, and bullshitting on the fly hadn't worked out at all. Finch had done her best to console me, recounting that she'd received the same training score before the 74th Games, but it didn't help me feel better.

_Five_. Cicero Templesmith's stupid grin taunted me as the morning sun crept over the Capitol's peaks, the brilliant yellow-white alpine light shining in through the apartment windows with a certain hardness this morning. The whole audience probably had smirked right alongside him, laughing at the dumb girl who the arena was sure to knock off quickly. This entire dumb strategy of playing under the radar was backfiring in a hurry.

The savory smells coming from the dining room table annoyed me. I didn't feel like eating whatever it was the silent, crimson-robed avoxes were laying out. I didn't feel like listening to Finch's encouragements, or hearing Elan's snide remarks about sponsors. I only felt like going back to my bed and sleeping through the rest of the Games.

As usual, Daud woke before the others. He looked even more ragged than the past few days, his beard ragged and gangly, his eyes underlined with violet half-moons as he flopped down in the nearest dining room table.

"You not eatin'?" he grunted.

I gritted my teeth at the sound of silverware clanking against ceramic plates. Everything was noisier today, like the whole Capitol was out to mock me for my training score. _Five!_

"I'm not hungry," I said, lying down on the couch and propping my head up on a cushion. "Just wanna go back to sleep."

Daud snorted. "Shoulda slept longer, then," he said in the midst of a mouthful. "Can't take a bed for granted these days."

"I'm sure you can," I muttered. I didn't mean to sound so spiteful to him, but I wasn't in the mood for my mentor's bluntness – especially after he'd hardly been around the past three days.

He laughed. "Not really. Not how this life works."

I forced myself up and stumbled towards the table. Daud already had mowed through half a sausage in under a minute and piled on a clump of grapes as I slumped forward on the table. "Getting sponsorships sounds really tough," I sighed, dropping a piece of toast on the floor.

"You have no idea."

_Sure_.

"Think I'll take all these sausages," Daud muttered as Elan strolled in, puffing up his blue hair with one hand while smoothing out his shiny gold shirt with another.

"I could ask for another plate," Elan said. "Of course, you probably don't want to see much of the avoxes today, do you?"

Daud stopped in mid-bite. His lip curled, and he glanced up at Elan with narrowed eyes. "Not that hungry," he said, his teeth clenched.

"I wouldn't be, either. Getting sponsorships is such hard work," Elan said. "I hope you're not too upset over your score, Terra. I came back after you were already asleep, but Finch told me you'd had a little trouble with it."

"Doesn't matter," I murmured, pushing a grape around my plate with my fork. "Nobody'll care anyway."

"Quite the contrary. I'm much happier you received a low score over a high one," said my escort. "I've met a bunch around the city who sympathize with the underdogs. I've stretched the truth a little bit, but when they see you as an underprepared, emotional girl thrown into a grindhouse, well, it provokes some protective instincts."

"'Cuz stretching the truth is such hard work," Daud snorted.

Elan smiled at him. "I like the stories I tell compared to yours. Less grisly."

"Finch said I was supposed to be 'useful,' whatever that means," I grumbled. "So the Gamesmakers would like me more."

"You'd be surprised about what passes for useful here," said Elan.

"Well, I'm not exactly pretty or strong or anything –"

"Sometimes it's the meek and the quiet who hold all the best cards," Elan interrupted. "Someone overlooked can wedge themselves into a dark corner and listen to what everyone else has to say. Knowing what others don't and staying on the periphery of the games of the strong and powerful breeds survivors. It can even lift you up, say, from tribute to victor…or to the most lavish parties thrown during the Games, escorting one of the wealthiest districts in Panem and listening to the drunken conversations of some of the most powerful people in the country."

Elan leaned back and crossed his arms. "Training doesn't mean much for those who take it literally, Terra. Finch figured it out with her own five in training, and I have no doubt you, and Glenn with his six, will figure it out as well."

He knew something about what the Gamesmakers wanted, but I didn't get the chance to ask for details. Breakfast flew by once Glenn and Finch settled down, and my mentors whisked me away for the rest of the morning to sharpen my interviewing skills for the pre-Games festivities the next night. I wasn't looking forward to that. The thought of a sea of twenty thousand probing eyes intimidated me, and the last thing I wanted was for thousands of strangers to laugh at my stutters and awkward pauses right in front of me. It wasn't exactly positive reinforcement headed into the arena.

"Cicero Templesmith doesn't make fun of anyone," said Finch after the tenth or eleventh time I'd brought up that fear. I dug my chin into my knees, sinking into the silky cushions of the living room's widest chair and wishing it would swallow me up. "He learned from old Caesar Flickerman. He brings out the best in everyone."

"Wouldn't be a very good interview if he didn't," Daud added, idly picking at a long, jagged, angry red scab along his forearm.

I shook my head. "I don't know how to sound smart."

"Terra," said Finch. "Alright – alright, let's start a little easier. Just tell me about the kids from District 2. What d'you know about them?"

"What?" I asked. "I mean – they don't like each other. The boy's quiet and wants to be left alone, but I'm pretty sure he's hiding how good he is, since the girl said he volunteered. Acheron, that's his name. He'll survive at least, since he knows his plants and can make a shelter. The girl's brash and is angry at him for not teaming up, and it sounded like she listened to their mentors more. She hasn't done anything but hit things with an axe and talk to the two from District 1. What's that got to do with anything?"

"See? You sounded smart right there," Finch said with a grin.

"No I didn't, I just paid attention to what they were saying and doing in training."

"Which is a pretty good way to play smart in the Hunger Games," said Daud.

"It's just training. Elan said –"

"The hell with Elan," Daud growled. "He's not in this thing. Besides, he told you very well that listening counted for a lot. If you're freezing to fucking death in the arena and you see a little point of light on the horizon that no one else does, maybe you find somewhere warm to spend the night while everyone else shivers in the snow. Little details matter."

"I just –" I said, stopping and throwing my hands up. "I don't know."

"Cicero's predictable," Finch said. She leaned over and put a hand on my knee. "I've listened to him for more than twenty years, and he asks the same kind of questions from the same kind of kids. He's worked with the Head Gamesmaker for a while, and he knows all about trying to build an image around each person. If you can let him know from the get-go all the things going on in that head of yours, he'll play along."

It didn't sound like a great plan to me. I was counting on an act I didn't know if I could pull off, and I knew I needed every bit of rapport with the audience I could muster in the arena. With my time left here in the Capitol growing shorter with every minute, the Games themselves swelled up in front of me.

The hell with it. I'd trust my team.

"Alright," I said. "Tell me what I need to do."

**/ / / / /**

The Head Gamesmaker smelled of cheap perfume and expensive wine.

"Why does he call these things at this hour?" Galan yawned, stretching his arms over his head and squinting against the noonday sun's reflection against the hot asphalt in the City Circle. "Barely even midday."

Cyrus rolled his eyes. The Games wouldn't be over soon enough for the man, even if only to avoid the Gamesmaker. "Creon gets up with the sun. He says it's to keep time with the districts."

"Terrible policy."

"It's just a meeting. You can go back to your whoring and games-making right after, or whatever kept you up last night."

Galan smirked as the two men reached the concrete steps to the Presidential Mansion. "One of these nights you'll accept my invitations. They're parties. We're not making secret blood sacrifices in the name of that ridiculous religion that some of the districts believe in."

"I'll take your word for it."

The great golden gates of the palatial building glistened in the sunlight. A pair of Peacekeepers loitered nearby, their guns slung over their shoulders, their postures anything but professional. Neither had to check Cyrus and Galan's identifications: The two men went where they pleased. Creon trusted them, and that was enough.

An anxious gnawing ate away at Cyrus's stomach as he and Galan hurried past the mahogany-lined halls and floor-to-ceiling pastel portraits within the mansion. He wasn't in the mood to admire the opulence of the palace today, or to stop and enjoy the sweet creamy scents that wafted through the air. He had Creon's trust, but men like Galan had a way with getting people to like them. Cyrus wanted to insulate the president from the sea of influences that Coriolanus Snow had navigated so well for fifty years, but the job was a lot tougher in the uncharted waters of a new presidency.

"Why am I even supposed to show up to this?" Galan asked as the two tromped down a wide, tile-floored hallway lined with marble sculptures of past Capitol icons. "Not exactly my line of work, governing and all. I'm a fan of more impulsive priorities. There's a delightful young thing from District 4 this year…"

"Coincidence, I'm sure."

"C'mon, Cyrus. Sometimes good luck strikes in the arena."

"It had better be more than your luck. Let's go in. Your arena can wait an hour."

Cyrus shouldered past the Gamesmaker and pushed open a heavy oaken door. Inside, statuettes of lapis lazuli and red jasper watched over a polished table cut from the heart of some giant spruce in District 7. Crystal windows on the far side of the room diffused the incoming sunlight into the thousands of tiny fractals of light that sparkled on the walls. The golden eagle of the Capitol spread its powerful wings on the great scarlet carpet underfoot, a giant copy of the emblazoned seal in the center of the table. Cyrus knew every inch of the President's Assembly Hall. Coriolanus Snow had come here every day for years, ensuring that he kept his fingers on every heartbeat of Panem's pulse.

That made it all the more worrying that Creon wasn't there.

In his place, a man with long, jet-black hair sat at the far side of the table, his hands folded around a silver pen. He was anything but the Capitol stereotype of a man, with nothing remarkable but his slate-gray vest and arching eyebrows setting him apart from the masses. The woman sitting to his right was something else entirely: With her pale blue-dyed skin, close-cropped white hair and dinner plate eyes surrounded by lashes the color of ash, she stood out in a room filled with excess.

Unfortunately, Cyrus knew _them_ all too well also.

"Taurus, Lucrezia," he said, sitting down and propping his elbows up on the table. "Creon running late?"

"He can't make it," the man, Taurus Sharpe, said. It seemed to Cyrus that his mouth hardly moved when he spoke.

"Can't blame the guy," laughed Galan.

Taurus's fingers twitched. "He's booked with Templesmith."

"Why don't we do this later, then," Cyrus said, getting up from his seat. "Wait until he's through with the media."

"We can do our jobs just fine now," Taurus said.

"Creon should have a say –"

"And he will, when I tell him what we've discussed later. Are you finished, Cyrus?"

Cyrus clenched his jaw. He wanted to leave, to slam his chair into the table and walk out, but it wouldn't do him any good. "Fine."

After watching the entire sequence, Lucrezia Bierce folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. "I'm a little concerned about your people, Galan."

The Head Gamesmaker snorted. "What, the crew? Blame the guys who hired them."

"The victors. I don't care about your employees."

"They aren't my people."

"She has a point," Cyrus cut in. "You oversee them while they're here."

Galan frowned and slumped forward. "We're supposed to be one the same side here, Cyrus."

"We are not-"

"The point," Taurus interjected, dropping his pen onto the table.

Lucrezia smiled at the silence that followed. "The point," she said. "Is that I've heard things out of District 4."

Galan perked up. "Me too. Good things."

"About your current victors, not what you're hoping to fuck," Lucrezia snapped. "After last year's result, thanks to you, the Odair family is the most influential group of victors in the country. Husband, wife, son – they appeal to the more conservative districts and the audience here in the city alike, not to mention their rabid popularity with their home district. The reports, unfortunately, say that their thoughts about the Capitol are…unfavorable. At best."

"Everyone says things they regret. You don't need a spy network to tell me that," Cyrus grunted.

"Disparaging things? Do you say them?" Lucrezia said, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't play with me. I worked for Coriolanus when you were drooling over schoolwork."

"And Coriolanus Snow let the victors roam about as they wanted, as long as they abided by his terms," said Taurus. "It's a lax policy, especially with the unsettled mood already in District 4. Not every victor's popular in the districts, but plenty are, and we need to keep them on a shorter leash."

_Bastard_. Cyrus knew a power play when he saw one. Taurus wouldn't have dared to put down Snow's ideas when he was still in office, but now that he was dead, criticizing the former president apparently was fair game. The dead were blind and deaf, after all. "They're just people out there," he protested. "Maybe Finnick Odair can command District 4's respect, but most of them just go about their lives. Half of them are ignored by their districts. Look at 12, or 5, or any of the others that don't care so much about the Games. If we piss them off, all we do is irritate our best connections to the districts."

Taurus frowned. "Our best connections, many of who also have combat and leadership experience and who are used to sacrificing for their tributes every year. Don't doubt for a minute where their loyalties lie."

"We could solve that whole problem by picking more impressionable victors," Galan mused, picking at a fingernail. "Ones a bit, uh, more susceptible to what we have to say. Or what we like to do in our free time."

Taurus nodded to him. "See to it. Whoever wins this year, I want them in our pocket."

"Like Gloss and Cashmere?" Cyrus asked.

Lucrezia laughed. It was a soft, tinkling sound that seemed laced with just a hint of poison, as if someone had dropped a dash of hemlock into a fine wine. "Too obvious. Everyone knows those two, and the sentiments in the outlying districts towards District 1 are not kind. Perhaps someone less…ah, expected, would be better for our purposes."

"You'll figure it out," Taurus said to Galan. "And one more thing – I'm not happy about the Odair boy winning last year. Make sure District 4 doesn't make it two years in a row."


	10. Questions

_**+ Big thanks again to ArtemisCarolineSnow and Radio Free Death for the great reviews, and to everyone who's reading and following along! I'm a little torn on this chapter…a necessary one, but eh. Got a lil' stuck. I realize more and more that I cannot describe clothes. I'd be the crappiest stylist of all time.  
**_

**/ / / / /**

"What'd he ask you?"

Finch dug her hands into her pockets and bit her lip as Finnick Odair struggled for the right words. It had been fifteen minutes since the Head Gamesmaker had dragged her into the Control Center, where the real work of the Hunger Games went on. As a dozen white-jacketed Gamesmakers punched away at holographic computer images in the circular alcove below, Finch loitered against a railing and crinkled her nose against the sterile smell of antiseptic that lingered in the air. It wasn't like Galan Greene to call victors in for individual questioning unless he had something serious on his mind – and it especially was out of place before the Games themselves even began.

Finnick ran a hand through his wavy bronze hair, just tinged with the first strands of silver here and there. Age lines poked their way through his famous face, but to Finch, he was still one of the most handsome victors. Gloss and Cashmere from District 1 may have prolonged their youth into their fifties through the Capitol's many medical marvels, but Finnick had a natural grace and style that defied time's march.

"He said he'd already had a few others in. Haymitch, Phoebe from 10, Johanna, a few others," said Finnick, glancing over his shoulder at the closed door behind him. "Guy seemed frustrated. He was just asking about my district's two kids competing this year. Didn't even ask anything about Drake."

Finch rubbed her arms and frowned. "You think something happened since training?"

"Psh. Like what? Someone forgot to take birth control?"

"C'mon. You've heard the talk. People say the Games are gonna be harsher with the new guy in office. Y'know, set the precedent that new Snow can run things just like old Snow."

Finnick threw up his hands. "Shit if I know, Finch. We won last year, and I'm not dumb enough to ignore that a lot of people around here don't like repeat district winners. My two kids probably got a fighting chance, but…I'm a little more focused on making sure my son actually lives through his first year as a victor."

Finch looked away. She didn't have a family any more, she'd never had nor wanted kids. She couldn't imagine what Finnick had to be feeling – or what he'd felt the year before. It was bad enough seeing two new kids every year struggle through the arena, but watching your own flesh and blood face unforgiving odds while you were nearly powerless to interfere was unfathomable.

"Is he doing alright?" she asked.

"Who, Drake?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, yeah. I mean, everyone expects him to be the second coming of me, but he's handling it pretty well. He's just not really into talking with all the rest of you guys. Nothing personal, you know – _I_ don't think you're a bad conversation when you're not using big words. But he just wants to stay away from the other victors for now. He's always been the independent type. I don't think he's really looking forward to giving an interview on stage with Cicero tonight before all the tributes go up and whatnot, but hey, that's life. That's life in…'bout two hours. Guess we should all get a move on."

Finnick had been in a good mood considering the Games kicked off in less than a day, but Galan Greene was anything but approachable as Finch walked into his office. The Head Gamesmaker kicked his feet up onto a wide metal desk, with a ceramic lamp lying on its side next to them. He cradled a half-empty glass of wine, pushing it up to his lips every thirty seconds or so to take tiny sips as he scrolled through data on a computer hologram. He didn't even look up as Finch sat down.

"Took your time coming in," Galan grunted, swirling his wine around.

Finch scooted her chair back. "I was talking to Finnick."

"Oh, wonderful conversation he was. Didn't even get a 'Hey, thanks again for my son's life.' Guy was totally checked out."

"Did you call me here just to talk about Finnick?"

"Oh, fuck no. I've had enough conversations about him over the past few days."

Galan rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. "I woke up this morning and realized that I don't actually know half as much about this year's tribute field as I thought I did. Considering the circumstances this year, that's…a little concerning. To me. And possibly others."

Finch nearly leapt out of her seat. Was he giving her a chance to sell her two tributes as victors? It was a good thing he hadn't invited Daud instead. "What d'you wanna know?" she asked, playing it cautiously. "You've seen 'em during training and everywhere else they've been in public."

"You've seen them in private," Galan said. "Start with the girl. Terra, that her name? Tell me 'bout her."

_In private_. The Head Gamesmaker clearly didn't have a good grasp on narrowing down his victor candidates this year. Well, if all the power were in her hands, Finch had no problem playing this game. "I mean, she's not really a talker. Terra's good at listening."

"Mmm," Galan grunted. "We'll see tonight. I'm not taking what you say as gospel, Finch. I'm just getting your opinion. I know everyone's biased towards their own."

"Oh, I know. But if she gets a chance – if either of my kids get a chance – in the arena, you'll be surprised. In a good way."

"If they don't do something stupid."

"Terra's a smart girl. She might be timid tonight, but she'll do what she has to in the arena."

"Don't know about that. She sucked in her private session, and in training she often just stood around and watched other people."

"She had the idea to watch the other kids. You know, figure them out before the arena. Learn what they were good at and all."

Galan downed the rest of his wine and eyed her. "_Her_ idea? Or yours?"

"Hers. All her. I was worried more about sponsors."

"Mm-hm. I should just bug the whole fucking Training Center next year. Fine, then. Tell me about the boy."

**/ / / / /**

What in the name of Panem had she dressed me in?

Whatever Finch had told Rhea after the parade, it hadn't worked. Rhea had draped me in a long, dark violet gown, the fabric glowing with bright white lines here and there. I'd almost balked when I saw the dark black eyeliner she'd globbed on, and standing in line with the other kids now waiting for my call-up to interview with Cicero Templesmith, I felt even more self-conscious. Glenn had contained a laugh when he'd seen me, and the girl from District 10 kept making faces and staring at me while we waited.

Ugh.

Lights dashed across the crimson curtain veiling the stage as Cicero joked with the audience on stage. He'd already brought Districts 1 and 2 up for interviews, and the man wasn't in any rush: As my stomach threatened to throw up my lunch out of nervousness, the Capitol entertainer performed a skit with his predecessor, Caesar Flickerman, on stage. I wished they'd just hurry up. The crowds, the lights, answering questions in front of every eyeball in Panem – it all made me want to curl into a ball and start bawling uncontrollably.

Tethys from District 4 glanced back and frowned. I thought for a moment that she, too, thought I looked ridiculous until she said, "You got the most creative stylist, huh?"

"The most ridiculous," Delfin, who stood in front of me in line, muttered.

That confirmed it. I did look stupid. "It's, uh, just a dress."

"All glowy," Tethys said, smiling. "It's cool."

It baffled me how Tethys and Delfin were a team. Even though they were from the same district, they looked as far apart as any two tributes here. He folded his arms and leaned against the concrete wall we all lined up against, his expression anything but excited to interview in front of the Capitol and the country. Tethys, meanwhile, looked like a little kid, almost bouncing up and down in her heels as she waited.

The line pushed forward all too quickly. It seemed like a blink of an eye from Tethys's remarks to Cicero shouting, "Give him a hand, ladies and gentlemen – Delfin Ramirez!" It was all going too fast, and when the Capitol attendant in a blue suit at the end of the curtain ushered me forward, I felt dragged along by some invisible force, like a puppet on a string turned this way and that by the salivating audience.

_Bam_.

Light, so much light! Cicero's shouts, the Capitol's applause, the great spotlights that bore down on me like a predator from above – it all blended into a cacophony that froze me on the spot. My throat tightened. _So many people!_ I tried to smile and look excited as I looked out over the sea of faces and gaudy suits and dresses in the audience, stretching up from just a dozen feet away all the way to the rafters of this giant hall. The best I could manage was a half-hearted wave and a little stumble towards where Cicero Templesmith, long green hair, bright orange suit and all, urged me forward to a shiny ivory chair.

"She's shy, folks, give her some space!" Cicero laughed, stretching out a hand towards me and beaming with an ear-to-ear smile. His eyes, shining as if they were gemstones, transfixed me. "Terra, Terra, welcome. Feeling a little overwhelmed?"

I exhaled heavily and slumped down into my seat. _Just a little?_ All these eyes watching my every move in person made me want to curl up into a ball and wake up when everyone had left. "I, uh…yeah."

"Ah, we all do," Cicero said, coming to my rescue without missing a beat. "Caesar remembers, don't you old man? Stumbling all about up here!"

The camera and spotlight raced out to the side stage, where old Caesar Flickerman his face creased with age's fault lines and his sparkling blue suit unable to hide his growing stomach, threw his head back and laughed. I silently thanked the chance to clench my eyes shut for just a moment to collect myself.

"Just like yesterday," Cicero said. "And just a few days ago for you, Terra, the Gamesmakers awarded you a score of five for your training session. Probably not the score you were looking for, so could you shed some light on how that's going to affect you headed into the Games?"

"It won't."

"It won't?"

Shit. I didn't know why I said that. Stupid, impulsive thing – of course it would affect me! Training mattered; it's what the Capitol broadcasts in every prior Games had always said. But now I'd plowed ahead, and I had to make do with what I'd wrought. "The arena won't be like training," I managed.

Cicero seemed to think on this for a moment, balling up his hand to his mouth as if he were hard in thought. "That's a fair point. Humor us, Terra. With many of the top competitors performing very well, what points the odds in your favor?"

"Everyone has weaknesses," I said. "I just need to take advantage of them. I've seen them."

"Oh? Such as?"

With any other host, I'd have been remiss to expound upon what was going through my head in front of the entire country, or to feel the surge of confidence that jutted up in my guts. But Cicero had a way of talking so smoothly with so few words, his head bowed just slightly like he honestly respected my opinion, that urged me to keep talking. "You had the two from District 2 up here a few minutes ago. They argue a lot. I don't think they like each other."

"Playing spoiler!" Cicero boomed with a bright smile. "Keeping an eye on everyone, have you?"

"Yeah. Something like that."

"Well, well. I'm going to have to ask you to hold your secrets so we don't spill _everything_, tonight. And don't we all want to be surprised, huh folks?"

The man knew how to command an audience. Cicero basked in the cheers for a moment before saying, "But we could always use just a taste, Terra. Just a taste. Tell us: What's your secret? What are you holding back that will make you District 5's first victor in more than twenty years?"

A royally stupid idea slipped into my head. Between Cicero's intoxicating aura and the steady momentum I'd been climbing through the interview, however, I couldn't hold it back: "Wouldn't be a very good secret if I told. What's yours?"

Cicero laughed. "Keeping us all in the dark! I like you. I'll tell you what, Terra. My secret is that I cannot _wait_ to see what you have in store for us tomorrow. You're our little mystery, and when the curtain rises, I have a feeling we are going to be impressed. I love it! Ladies, gentlemen, Terra Pike! From District 5!"

**/ / / / /**

It had been a bit different from what Finch and Daud had wanted, but I could work with Cicero's angle. Mystery. Keep everyone in the dark. Secrets. Sure. If that implied that I only needed to talk less, than I could do it. I didn't know if I could show off that kind of confidence in the arena without Cicero there to urge me on, but taking all those eyes in the audience out of the picture would help.

Of course, the issue of twenty-three other kids dying was becoming a much bigger problem now that the Games were less than twelve hours away – and that came into full view that night, when I walked out of my bathroom to see Glenn sitting on my bed, his hands clasped in his lap. The lights were off, but I see just enough of his long face in the lights of the Capitol shining that it was obvious he wanted to talk.

"Didja get lost?" I said, tightening my night gown's waist cord and leaning against the wall. Outside, revelers gathered by the thousands around glowing holograms of some of the favorites – Tethys, District 1's kids, Acheron. I wished I was out there with the celebrations, happy to live with the Hunger Games as an excuse to party rather than a test of endurance. They were having fun, but the reality of what I was in for had settled in.

Glenn shrugged. "Nah. Finch and Daud took off for sponsorship stuff."

"You're not sleepy?"

"I just want to talk. Y'know. Before tomorrow."

I sighed and slumped down onto the floor, pulling my knees up to my chest and leaning against the wall. "'Bout what?"

"What'd you want to do back home?"

"What'd I want to do?"

"Like, you know. Job. Life."

I fretted and looked back out at the Capitol's neon honeycomb. Those streets looked like something I'd like to do right about now. "I wanted to run the dam. Engineering and all that."

Glenn laughed. "Really? I don't even know a shit about that thing."

"Water pushes the turbines. Makes electricity. Always just seemed cool to me."

"Pff. Kinda geeky."

"You really wanted to talk about the dam?"

He scowled and clenched his hands together. "I didn't really want to be anything."

"Well, I mean, you had plenty of time to figure that out. We're teenagers."

"No, nothing even seemed possible in the future. My parents are fucking dead, Terra. Nobody ever gave two shits about me, and I decided a long time ago that I didn't care, either. I just wanted to get away from all that. That's why I said I would've volunteered. I know District 5's home to you, but it's just a shithole in the desert to me. Being trapped there forever is…I'd never make it."

I recoiled. "You want to die?"

"The fuck else do I have, Terra?" Glenn snapped, his voice breaking as he said my name. "I got hollowed out when I came into this stupid world. Boo-hoo, huh? At least when I'm here, going into the Games, I'm doing something good for once in my dumb fucking life. Some other schmuck doesn't have to be here."

I didn't know what to say. "I – Glenn, there's always an option. If either of us win, we have our whole lives ahead of us."

"Oh, swell, to do what?" he said with a smirk. "Get your head out of what you've seen on the broadcasts, Terra. You think Daud's happy? Or Finch? Shit, by the looks of it, Daud's life is a trainwreck just as much as mine has been. I've always been terrible at school. I never would have been much at any of the power plants besides some dumb wrench-puller, and I've never even sniffed money. The hell's the point of going through the motions for forty more years or however long? Nobody's gonna remember me anyway."

"You don't know that. Things can change."

"Yeah, there's a whole helluva lot of evidence pointing to that."

I glanced back out the window. Suddenly, the streets didn't seem so festive. While everyone out there was celebrating, in here, Glenn poured out the contents of a life crushed again and again under a hammer I couldn't understand. It was as if he'd come from some corner of District 5 I'd never seen, a corner where kids were thrown naked into the sand at birth and expected to run. My father and mother had considered me a burden, but at least they'd put a roof over my head and given me the opportunity to have dreams. Glenn had never even gotten that far.

A poisonous little tendril reached into my head. "Why didn't you just jump from the cliff, then?"

He snorted. "Stupid thing. I felt the urge to so many times, but I always remembered what those dumb church guys always said. Killing yourself, oh, it sends you to the Dark Hell. Oblivion claims you and makes you relive all your worst moments forever. Die fighting like the guys back in the Dark Days did and you at least go to the Flame Gates. I didn't even really believe in that crap, but it still stuck around in my head. Hey, if they're right somehow and I die in the arena, at least I don't go to either of the two Hells."

"Glenn, you don't – aren't you even going to fight for yourself in the arena?" I said. It was too late now to convince this boy that he had hope, too late to fight against a life that had forced his face in the mud forever. Still, I tried. "Whoever wins, we still have a chance. I know Daud and Finch aren't the best futures, but it's better than dying."

"Psh. Why even bother caring, Terra? We're both fucked. I know you're a decent girl, but let's face facts."

"Maybe I care about someone who's hurting. You said you were doing something good by coming here. Why can't I do the same? We're all just people here, Glenn."

"Well, go for it. Dunno how much good it'll do you," he said. "It's funny. I wonder what kinda victor you'd be. I don't think you'd be Daud or Finch."

"Maybe I'd just be me, and you'd be you."

"Maybe. Shit. I hope you find out. I'll let you sleep, Terra. Only a little while before we figure out what this whole week of bullshit's worth."


	11. I Don't Want to Die

_**+ Yea, changed the title. Thought it was a little too blocky, and the new one has a nice alliterative ring to it. Once more, big thanks to the ongoing reviews, ArtemisCarolineSnow! Always great to know people are reading and enjoying; shout out also to everyone following along. Time to actually get into the action after ten chapters of lead-up!**_

**/ / / / /**

_Thump-thump-thump_.

My foot tapped out a rapid beat on the floor under the dining table. I had to eat, I had to get something in my stomach, but I couldn't so much as lift my fork off my plate. Last night I'd fallen asleep just fine, but I'd woken up with nervousness and anxiety clawing at my guts. The glistening, bright Capitol, so beautiful and glossy in the early morning light, shimmered away into the nightmarish anticipation of what awaited in the arena in just a few hours.

Mutts? Starvation? Death by the hands of some sicko who lost his mind as soon as he'd stepped foot off his platform? Every little fear that circulated in my head stepped out into the spotlight, squeezing my waning confidence in a vise.

No one spoke. Glenn leaned over a plate of eggs, stirring golden mush about his plate with a knife. Daud occupied himself with food, not even glancing up at either of us as he ate, while Finch clasped her hands and stared off into space as if deep in thought. I was glad for the silence. My gathering storm of emotions was threatening to breach my eyes' levees.

If only I'd learned some sort of fighting. If only I'd gotten a better score. If only I'd _really_ wowed over Cicero and the audience last night…

Something beeped, and Daud glanced down into his lap. "Ride's waiting," he grunted, pushing back from the table and wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

My hand shook. My throat closed up as Glenn looked over at me like he expected me to go first. Why couldn't I have a bit more time?

"Alright," I squeaked, biting my lip to hold back the tears I felt welling up in my eyes. "Yeah."

"I'll take you up," Daud muttered. Before I could stumble a few feet, however, Finch grabbed my shoulder and pulled me close.

"You listen," she said. Her hair seemed even brighter and redder than normal as I fought to keep my composure. "Don't you panic, okay Terra? Keep your head in there, take your time if you have it, and think things through. You do whatever you need to, alright?"

I looked down and sniffed. "Alright."

"Good luck," she said, squeezing my shoulder. "Go on, now."

As soon as the elevator doors closed, I fell apart. I knelt down on the harsh metal floor, cradling my forehead in my hands and letting out every last tear that had welled up since I'd woken up. "I'm sorry," I choked, expecting Daud to be frustrated at me. "I'm sorry."

He didn't yell at me, or even just watch me as I slumped over and cried. I heard him punch a button on the elevator, and as the lift jerked to a stop, he wrapped a pair of powerful arms around my waist and pulled me into his steel chest.

"Nothin' to be sorry about," he whispered his voice suddenly so much softer than the harsh grumble I'd gotten used to. "The rest of us should be sorry. We keep standin' by and watchin' as you kids do the hard work. Twenty-four years of it I've stood and watched."

"I don't want to die," I blubbered into his shoulder.

"I know," he said. Daud held me tight and leaned against the wall of the elevator, sighing loud enough that the other floors probably heard it. "Before I got caught up in all of this, I wanted to be a father someday. What kind of a man walks his own children to this beast?"

I looked up. Something had died in Daud's eyes: For a brief moment, he looked as if someone had hollowed out a spark from deep inside, leaving a cold void in its place.

In a second it was gone, the hard man I'd come to understand back in place. His finger hovered over the button for the roof. "Not much of a man. I'm just a killer caught up in my job," he said, punching the button and letting me go.

**/ / / / /**

On any average morning, the Capitol streets would be home to few travelers: The weary nightcrawlers who had stayed out too long, the loners, the workers who couldn't afford to sleep in like most people. Not today, however: Today was the Hunger Games, and today _everyone_ packed the morning sun-lit avenues of the shining silver city, salivating over the spectacle to come.

Elan hated this day every year. The District 5 escort didn't mind the crowds – he welcomed them, in fact – but gathering sponsorships meant earning often meager rewards for hard work.

"This might be the best day of the year," said the man who walked alongside Elan through the packed Capitol Forum. Where so many in the crowd looked stunning in glossy, colorful outfits and faces sculpted with perfect coats of makeup, Julian Tercio was anything but a model. His floppy mane of auburn hair hung limply down beneath his ears, with an odd strand here and there dyed a bloody shade of red. He seemed lost in the midst of the latest styles that Elan's brilliant purple tunic embodied so well, instead clad in a simple brown shirt with a black stain running down one arm. "Someone else makes sure all the tunnels are working today. Someone else makes sure all these people can spend to their hearts' content. Someone else makes sure drunken vomit hasn't backed up in the pipes. Bit of a weird thing, having a day all to myself."

"It's called 'leave' in the other offices," Elan mused as the two passed by a vendor hawking electronic gadgets to a crowd of teenagers. "Even we escorts can ask for it, except for the lead-up to today. We have a pool of substitutes who fill in."

Julian scrunched up his face. "Well, all these people never leave, and thus I don't _get_ leave."

"I'm sure if you asked politely they'd give you some heed. You do look after all the unpleasantries of this city."

"Mmm. That'd certainly do it. Imagine all the applause as I stood up in the City Circle and asked, 'Excuse me, but would all several million of you mind not shitting today? I need a mental health break.'"

Julian stopped and gazed up at a wide video screen draped high above a scarlet-curtained storefront. Cicero Templesmith seemed giddy to Elan, nearly jumping in his seat out of excitement for the arena's launch in less than an hour. Old Caesar Flickerman, still dying his hair an off-putting shade of chartreuse despite his age, hung with his younger host with ease.

"I suppose I'll be spending all of my money today, rather than the public's," said Julian. "I bet that's what Cicero and Caesar would want me to do. Go, bet away, bet on everyone in the arena except for the one who wins! Of course, you're hoping I just bet on one or two."

"Well, you're not the only one with a job. I just have to do mine today while you're on, well, leave."

Julian shoved his hands in his pockets. "How about we at least sit down if we're going to talk business? Dodging passersby with their necks craned for a better view isn't my idea of fun."

The two settled on a bench at the edge of the Forum, nestled beside a marble fountain in the shade of a trio of palms and overlooked by a colossal, flowering bird of paradise. Twenty feet away, a line snaked towards a gambling booth where real-time odds for all twenty-four tributes invited the lucky, the bold, and the careless to empty their wallets.

"Twenty-four-to-one and twenty-to-one. Not looking so good for you," Julian muttered.

"Just odds," said Elan.

"Well, they're not in your favor. I hope you're not going to give me some little spiel like the rest of them do. Yesterday alone Finnick Odair and old Effie Trinket ambushed me after work, regaling me of the virtues of paying in for District 4."

"I hope you turned them down."

"Politely. Somewhat."

Elan leaned in and lowered his voice. "I heard a good reason for that at your very own party two nights ago. A very drunk Galan Greene told me that District 4 isn't worth much this year."

"I hope you don't expect me to pay you for that. Galan hates districts repeating. Even avoxes probably know that," scoffed Julian.

"Consider it pro bono."

The two paused as Cicero and Caesar bantered back and forth on the screens around the Forum. The host and the analyst had dived into discussing chances of some of the most overlooked tributes in the Games – and perhaps the biggest underdogs.

"Terra Pike. She's from District 5," Cicero said as footage from Terra's interview popped up behind the studio desk. "Any similarities to past tributes we can go on?"

"I'll go back more than two decades for a comparison" Caesar said, raising his eyebrows and holding up a finger. "Finch Rivers. From District 5, also scored a five, also quiet, intelligent, bit of a mystery – and look where she got! Beat out a few of the most physical tributes of the seventies on her way to winning. I remember when she got the jump on Thresh from District 11, right at the height of the Games –"

Julian stuck out his jaw and fretted. "They say Effie's the most convincing out of all the escorts, and that's why District 4's so good at picking up sponsorships. Apart from the obvious with Finnick," he said. "But I'm not the only one who knows that you're willing to go where others won't."

"Fortune favors the bold," said Elan.

"Fortune favors the fortunate. Might not have been this year, though. D'you know that Cyrus Locke suggested to Creon Snow that this year's Games be suspended? With the unrest in District 4 and the pox outbreak in 12 and 11, he wanted him, ah what was it, 'free from distractions.'"

"I have a feeling that didn't pass by the Advisory Committee."

"Obviously. One word from Taurus shoots everything down. And here we are, watching Cicero and Caesar at it again. They even promise us a twist this year."

Elan leaned in again, lowering his voice to little more than a whisper. "Speaking of Taurus Sharpe and the insiders…have you heard about his plans for our victor this year?"

"I have not," Julian said, propping his elbows onto his knees. "Is this the part where I hear something I'm not supposed to know? I love these parts."

"Once again, a drunk Galan Greene is good for all sorts of tidbits. I lured him off to a corner of your estate and offered him wine until I thought he'd pass out. I was in it for information on what he wanted out of the Games, but as it turns out, the hole runs a bit deeper than I'd imagined."

"I get the feeling this tidbit is going to cost me dearly."

"And every credit will be worth it. Investing in Terra Pike and Glenn Turner through me could pay off much more handsomely than twenty-to-one odds, considering what's in store for whoever walks out of the arena alive."

**/ / / / /**

If I was scared in the elevator, I was flat-out terrified in the tube that would take me into the arena.

Rhea had been about as helpful as dog poop getting me ready down below. She'd merely shoved a tight maroon tank top at me, saying, "It's probably gonna be hot." Sturdy hiking boots with thick rubber soles and a pair of tough but loose white trousers, baggy enough to let in the wind, rounded out my uniform. It wasn't much to go on. I'd tied my hair up in a ponytail and splashed water on my face in preparation for what was to come, but besides that, I was headed into the arena blind.

I'd passed the idle minutes by rubbing my thumb over the hard red patch where a Capitol attendant on the hovercraft had plunged a long needle into my arm and injected a tracker. It still hurt, but fear for what was coming next had overwhelmed the pain.

The tube brought everything into focus. As soon as the clear plastic enveloped me and the lift inched its way out of the green-walled holding room below and towards the arena above, I struggled to breathe. I wanted to get out, _out_, of this thing! I didn't want to go up there!

My last view of Rhea Perrigo was my stylist leaving the room as fast as she could before darkness surrounded me. The darkness didn't end there, however.

After a minute or so of rising in nothing but blackness, I was convinced that whoever had built this arena had placed the holding rooms too far underground. That, however, wasn't it: I realized something wasn't right when a loud _crack!_ snapped through the tube. I looked up as a lightning bolt arced through an inky sky. The tube pulled back, and I smelled the acrid stench of sulfur on the hot, dry wind.

They'd thrown me into the Dark Hell itself.

A midnight sky laced with lightning-lit clouds stretched off to jagged, rocky peaks on three sides of me. Ahead and off in the distance, flashes of lightning lit up what looked like long-dead stone ruins, eaten away by time and the wind. Everywhere I looked I saw rocks, rocks, and more rocks – rocks big and small, rocks jagged and smooth, rocks that shined with the light from the sky's electric show and rocks even blacker than the sky. The Cornucopia itself was submerged in a small depression of sorts: Whoever went down there would be committed to a fight, unless they could hurry up a small but steep hill quickly. I couldn't even see what was in the giant metal horn from my platform.

I'd cried out my last tears long ago, but the hot wind sucked even the saliva out of my throat. Other tributes had risen on either side of me, but in the gloomy darkness, I couldn't make out who they were. The booming of thunder nearly deafened Caesar Flickerman's booming voice as he announced, "Welcome, tributes, viewers, Panem, to the 96th Hunger Games! Let the countdown…begin!"

A red flare shot up from the cone of the Cornucopia into the black sky, a blast of lightning accompanying the kickoff. My nerves threatened to tear me apart just when I needed them the most. _Don't panic, Terra. Keep your head. Think. Think._ Gods, how could I not panic in _this_ place? It was an arena designed for panic!

With twenty seconds to go, I steadied my resolve just enough to look for something I could grab. Something, anything – and then I spotted it. A sturdy backpack was propped up next to a rock about ten feet in front of me, just on the lip of the depression that ran down into the Cornucopia. Next to it was the only weapon I could see all around, a machete that shined with the bright flashes of lightning.

_Get that. C'mon Terra. I need you to focus now._

Five seconds. Four. Three. Two.

One.

I fell apart just as a green flare shot out of the Cornucopia and the kid to my right sprinted forward. I half-jumped forward and half-ran back, caught between the two ideas and settling for stumbling off to my left and narrowly catching my balance before I fell over.

Oh God. Oh God. _I don't know what to do._

I stopped as the kid from my right grabbed the machete and hurdled over the lip of the depression. The backpack was still there. I could still get it. It might even have stuff in it I could use.

_The hell with this_.

Shouts. Screams. The boom of thunder. I bolted back towards the jagged peaks and took off running. I wasn't getting the pack. I wasn't getting anywhere near that Cornucopia, near the shouts and the screams and whatever else was going on down there.

_I don't want to die_.


	12. The Dead Lands

_**+ Again, thanks to ArtemisCarolineSnow for the review! Seriously, you are a terrific reader and reviewer! Time to dive into the arena and some action. Fair warning; I'm looking to ramp up some of the horror aspects far more than the book games did down the road. Just seems like there's so much more potential in the arena besides just mutts, Careers, and some bad weather/terrain effects to be exploited. **_

**/ / / / /**

The orchestra of cannons began a little while later.

I sat down on a rock and dug my feet into the loose, scraggy stones of the earth, rubbing my cheeks and coming away with my palms covered in grease and dust. My knees ached from the several times I'd tripped running from the Cornucopia, stubbing my feet on rocks hidden in the darkness. Only a dull violet glow from the city ruins far behind me, along with the frequent flashes of lightning, kept me on a straight path away from whatever horrors I'd escaped from.

_Boom_.

The sky flashed, but it wasn't lightning. A bright white flare burst through the darkness from the distant horizon to my right. _Boom_, again – the thunder, no, the gunshot – the _cannon_ shot.

_Boom. Boom._

Five, six, seven – and just before I moved onto eight, a red flash high above me lit up the sky. The familiar rumbling hum of a hovercraft joined the bass drum strikes of the cannons. _Here for the bodies_, I thought, but I stopped as the aircraft halted high above the arena, far off from where I figured the Cornucopia had to be. A trio of white streamers flared off into the sky, and in a brief moment, I saw as something jetted away from the hovercraft towards the ground.

It hadn't been here to pick anything up – it'd arrived to drop something off.

I was perplexed. Had the Gamesmakers forgotten something by mistake? Maybe I'd just been mistaken; maybe it had just lowered a claw or something else to scavenge for dead tributes. Most likely, the arena's darkness already was playing games with my head. I never minded the night back home, but in District 5, thousands of stars and the familiar creamy band of the galaxy called the midnight sky home. Here there was nothing but the ink above from horizon to horizon, broken up only by the hot lightning that lit up menacing dark clouds.

The color had been drained of this place. Everywhere I looked, sharp, spiny gray and black rocks stretched out as far as I could see. The arena had pushed back life itself. There were no trees, no animals, no plants, no sign that nature had ever touched this place.

I had no choice. I'd fled with nothing but my clothes and my rapidly diminishing confidence, and without water or food out here, I wouldn't make it three days, even if Delfin or Acheron or some other tribute didn't come along and skewer me on the pointy end of a stake.

Now wasn't the time to sulk about how I'd run away without even trying to salvage a moral victory at the Cornucopia. I had to leave that behind.

Scrambling over the loose shale ground meant that heading off in the direction of a tall, shadowy peak was slow going. I had nothing to help me keep my balance here in these dead lands, and every ten minutes I had to pick myself up from yet another ungainly fall.

_What a clumsy one!_ I imagined Cicero Templesmith laughing back in his studio, free from the oppressive dry heat of the arena. _Good thing she didn't try to fight it out. She'd probably fall onto a sword by accident!_

Time trudged on. The night didn't. The wasteland air sapped all the saliva out of my throat and mouth, but I'd seen no sign of water since…however long I'd been hiking from the Cornucopia. I had no way to tell time here with no sun and no moon, and the only certainty I'd concluded was that it was before the end of the first day. So far, I'd seen no sign of the nightly death count in the sky. I didn't even know how _many_ other kids had died with the hovercraft's interruption. I was blind and deaf, scrabbling this way and that in the dead wastes.

My stomach growled. Now my not eating much this morning felt idiotic. I should have eaten as much as I could. I should have done a lot of things. I should have learned more, I should have made a better impression. Stupid things. Stupid girl doing stupid things, and now it was going to bite me if I couldn't even find a drop of water in this place.

After the fiftieth or so time I'd slipped on shale, I came face to face with the Gamesmakers' idea of lunch.

An oblong beetle the size of my fist scurried under a stone. The glare from a lightning flash shined off of its glossy shell, and it probed the air with a pair of finger-length antennae. I'd seen bugs like this all the time in District 5, collecting around the base of algae farms and congregating about the back door of my family's cantina that ill patrons frequented. I ignored them then, but I couldn't afford to ignore this guy.

I was hungry.

My stomach rumbled in discontent – both out of a lack of food and the prospect and chowing down on an insect. In the dusk, I couldn't figure if this bug had been one of the "edible insects" that training was supposed to teach, but right now, it was the only thing I had in terms of energy.

_Just bite the bullet and eat it, Terra_.

I scrunched up my nose and caught the bug by its legs. It clawed at my fingers, but I was determined to beat this thing. I sure hadn't beaten anything else, from training to the Cornucopia to what I could only imagine any sponsors in the Capitol thought of me by now. I could do this. I wasn't afraid of _everything_.

"C'mon," I said, squeezing my eyes tight and dropping the bug into my mouth.

_Youch!_ It clamped onto my tongue as soon as it fell in, and I bit down instinctively. A crunchy goop exploded in my mouth, the taste of bitter almonds someone had left out for far too money months fanning out to every corner of my mouth. I coughed, hiccuped, and forced myself to swallow. _Blech!_

I leaned over and sucked in a long breath. _Please tell me there's actual food in this place_.

Still, it was better than nothing. I clambered on, climbing over a nearby hill and facing down into a gravely crater. I'd begun to regret coming this way so far from anything alive, but one look down told me that I wasn't entirely without luck.

A red flare burned down in the center of the crater, hissing with crimson sparks. It was light – _light_, real light that wasn't from the sky or from the cannons. Even better, a small, wooden box about the size of a small couch sat next to it, covered in gravel but containing a mystery begging to be unlocked. Maybe it was food, water, tools even, something, _anything_ I could use to get out of the monochromatic despair of these dead wastes.

I nearly tripped over my own feet as I scrambled down the scree. When I rushed up to the crate and saw the steel latches on the back of the wood, however, reality smacked me in the face. Here I had a box with untold benefits for staying alive right in front of me…

…and I had no way of opening it.

Two Hells! I smashed a rock into the box's lid in frustration, but I didn't do more than split the loose stone into pieces. The rocks here were too brittle and frail, and kicking the box only left me with a sore foot. I sat down on the box and clamped my palms against my head, seething in frustration. _Think_. The flare could work, but I risked setting ablaze anything inside – and I certainly didn't have any water to put out a fire with.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much more of a choice. Just as I bent down to grab it, however, a loud hiss froze me solid. Illuminated by the flickering red light, a thick, shiny-skinned snake slid along the base of the box, eying me up and tasting the air with its tongue. It looked just as hungry as I was.

Slowly, surely, I backed up. Trap! Maybe there was something in the box, but grabbing the flare would no doubt earn me a bite – and I had no idea whether or not the snake was poisonous. It was big, and the scaly triangular ridges over its beady eyes gave it a menacing glare. So much for looking bold. I wasn't going to screw around with that. This was the Hunger Games. No doubt the snake was packing a gallon of venom behind its fangs. I'd had my fill of rattlesnakes back in the canyon at home, and the last thing I wanted to do was die panting and gasping as snake venom flowed through my veins. Knowing the Gamesmakers, this snake was probably much, much more deadly, as well. I doubted I'd have minutes.

But danger had boxed me into the crater. The snake had forced me out of the bottom, and climbing back up would mean scrambling over all the loose scree to the lip of the hill. I wouldn't get there in time: Standing at the top, a tall boy with a backpack over one shoulder eyed me. A flash of lightning lit up the iron crowbar in his hands. His trousers were torn and shredded, as if he'd already survived one fight with another kid or an animal.

Oh no. No, no.

He kicked a mound of scree down the hill and shrugged. "Hey."

I backed up, putting the box between me and him and careful to keep sight of the snake. "Hey."

The boy leaned back and slid down the hill, landing on all fours a dozen feet away. Another lightning flash lit up his face: He was the boy from District 7, the one I'd seen showing off skills as a fist fighter back in training. He had a weapon, he had supplies, and he was a lot, _lot_ bigger than me.

"Saw you come this way from a ways off," he said, glancing down at the box. "Anything good in there?"

"You can have it," I said. I glanced over my shoulder. Even if he slipped as much as I did on the loose rock, there was no way I'd get up the hill before he overtook me. Heat flashed across my face, and I felt numb.

He snorted. "Kinda intend to. But, y'know. Gotta take care of business."

"D'you want something?" I asked, stalling for time. My mind raced and my heart pounded. The rocks were too brittle to defend myself with. I didn't have any weapons on me. I was half his size. Negotiate? C'mon, c'mon: "Look, I, uh…I know the volunteer kids always team up. We can look after each other. I'm handy."

"Not this year," he said, planting the curved end of his crowbar into the ground and wiping his forehead. "The boy from 2 killed his district partner. I saw it. The pair from 4 hightailed it. There's no little band."

_Oh Gods._ Plan B was down. My throat tightened up and I balled my fists. "Y'know, I just…I…how 'bout I just go? You – I…you probably don't wanna kill anyone anyway." Fear licked like a fire at my face. "I probably won't last too long out there as it is."

The boy sighed and hoisted his crowbar. "Don't like to tempt fate," he said. "Look, I'm not a sadist. Just come over and kneel down and I'll make it fast. Back of the head, whap, you won't even feel it."

My lungs felt like lead. I shook my head and stepped back. "I can't," I whispered.

"Suit yourself," he said.

He stepped forward and I glanced down. I had something, one shot. One stupid, desperate shot to survive, and it wasn't in my hands. I pivoted to my right, trying to keep the box between the two of us. He frowned and placed his hand on the lid, vaulting over the box and landing right next to the snake's head.

_Whap!_

The serpent lunged. Lightning crackled overhead as the snake dug its fangs into the boy's exposed ankle, right between where the seam in his trousers had torn. He swore and jumped back, his eyes widening as large as bird eggs as he saw the animal. He dropped his crowbar in shock and bent down in a panic, rubbing his finger over the bite wound.

"No, no…"

_C'mon Terra!_ I lunged and hurled a chunk of rock at the snake, distracting it just long enough to get my hand around the flare and jump back.

"That was a dirty trick, bitch," the boy from 7 groaned, picking up his crowbar. "Probably not even poisonous."

"You wanna bet on it?" I hissed, waving the flare in front of my face and keeping the snake between us.

He spat at me. "Not gonna save you."

The boy lumbered towards the box again, but he grimaced as he planted the bitten leg. Whatever the snake had injected, it was working fast. As I circled and kept the box and the serpent between us, the boy clenched his teeth and breathed heavily.

"Get over here, you fucking coward," he snarled, his voice breaking as he swore.

I shook my head. "Uh-uh."

He grunted and smacked at the snake with his crowbar, knocking it out of the way. He lunged at me, but I jumped aside and waved the flare at him again. The boy backed up out of the way of the burning sparks and right into the snake's path a second time.

_Whap!_

He went down. The boy grabbed his leg and groaned, rolling away from the snake and dropping his crowbar to the ground. The venom was acting fast. Already he was spitting up and coughing, struggling to get on his two feet. As soon as the boy stood up, he fell down to the ground again and choked up foam. He tried to say something, but his face was so contorted in pain that I could only make out a garbled jumble.

I wouldn't want to die like that.

I held my flare aloft and circled around the box, careful to keep my distance from the snake. The boy lurched at his crowbar like a broken marionette. He fell on his face in the scree, gasping and struggling for a breath as I pried his weapon away.

"Back of the head," I said, tossing my flare to one side. "You won't even feel it."


	13. Two Deaths

_**+ Thanks once again to the wonderful ArtemisCarolineSnow for the review! And yea, we're not done with seeing exactly what Terra can eat in the arena. Yay! And we take a short detour to District 4 in the second half of this chapter. Also, sorry for the wait…this chapter, yeesh. This chapter gave me issues. Hopefully that will not happen again…**_

**/ / / / /**

"_Huhck!"_

So much for courage. I dry-heaved over the bloody rocks where the boy from District 7's body had rested just a minute ago, before the hovercraft had swooped down and spirited it away from this horrible place. I'd killed him. I. Me.

Gods, I'd killed him.

It'd just seemed so simple. He'd fallen, I'd had a rush of bravery, I'd swung the crowbar at his head, and now…now…now I didn't know what to do. I propped myself up on my blood-stained tool and hobbled towards the still-unopened chest, careful to keep an eye on the snake as I did. Wedging the sharp end of the crowbar into the wooden lid, I jammed down on the tool and laid my weight onto it. The lid gave with a sharp _crack!_ and split open. I slipped back down onto the ground and tossed the crowbar aside. For all of…all of that, the prize had to be worth it.

The Gamesmakers, however, hadn't rewarded me.

When I shoved the lid off to the side, a horde of cockroaches swarmed out of the box. I shrieked and jumped back, skidding on the loose scree and landing on my rear. More bugs streamed out nad littered the ground. _Enough!_ I grabbed the dead boy's backpack and the crowbar and hightailed it up the ridge, scrabbling on unsteady rock in my desperation to get out of the hellish hole. I'd forgotten the flare and abandoned any hope that there was anything beneath the sea of bugs – _forget it!_ I couldn't take it anymore. I stumbled over the lip of the depression, fell to my knees, and cried. I'd killed a stranger for nothing. Nothing! The backpack was empty, and I was no closer to keeping my growing hunger and thirst at bay – not to mention keeping away any roving predators or more aggressive tributes who might take advantage of me.

I wanted to throw the crowbar away. I wanted to bury it deep where nobody would find it, but it was all I had. It was the only useful thing I'd gained from killing some kid whose parents and friends probably were cursing me right now. The horrible, brutish black tool caked in blood was my only lifeline out here.

This was all happening too fast. I slumped down into the loose rock, using the backpack as a pillow as I cried myself to sleep.

Yet despite my hopes, day never came. Night reigned when I woke. The Capitol had taken the sun away from me until I died or won. I'd never even heard the announcement of the daily death count. Either I'd been too tired to wake up for it…or the Gamesmakers were keeping us all in the dark. I leaned over, grabbing my stomach and wincing at a pang of hunger. No telling what time it was, but I guessed I hadn't drank anything in somewhere around a day. I couldn't keep going like this.

My thirst wasn't the hardest-hitting problem besieging me, though. When I looked around the empty expanse of rock, lightning, and darkness all around me, I saw nothing but emptiness. Loneliness filled in the gaps in my mind, festering in the nooks and crannies in my fraying sanity. In however long it had been since I stepped into this place, the one person who I'd really met had communicated with me via death. For all I knew, everyone else I'd meet from now until I ventured off into the great beyond would greet me just the same.

I'd never had many friends, but this kind of loneliness crushed me. The arena's void hollowed out a spot in my heart. As I stumbled to my knees and braced myself on my crowbar, my mind howled at me to lie down. _Why get up?_ screamed the thoughts bubbling out from some dark corner of my brain. _You're not fighting for anything or anyone but yourself. Don't keep fighting it. Maybe you're already dead_.

I got up anyway.

A torrent of lightning crackled off in the distance, away from the Cornucopia and towards the other side of the depression and what I figured was the edge of the arena. A storm, maybe, or the Gamesmakers telling me they were going to push me back towards the center. As hard as I looked, I couldn't see anyone else out here. As much as I wanted to avoid the others, I couldn't imagine the arena would let me stay alone for long. I didn't want to be surprised again.

First off, however, I had to attend to my rumbling stomach.

The depression tempted me back down its hills, and I slid down the scree with a certain sense of dread. The snake was gone, the flare was long since out, and the body was long gone, but walking back into the pit as a _boom_ of thunder roared overhead shook my nerves. It didn't help when I approached the box. Roaches and beetles still covered the crate, and right now, I had to think more about keeping myself going rather than how disgusted this sight made me.

Oh boy.

_You ate a beetle yesterday, Terra_. Reminiscing over the goopy, crunchy taste wasn't reassuring. I bit my lip and waved my crowbar at the box, knocking a dozen skittering insects to the ground. Breakfast would consist of a half-dozen roaches nearly the size of my palm, a few dark-shelled beetles, and what I only imagined was a gargantuan grasshopper born from some horrible nightmare, its finger-length antennae daring me to shove it down my gullet.

_Smack!_ I pounded the insects into a pulpy, leg-strewn mash with my weapon. Squeezing my eyes shut, I gathered the remains into a goopy burger-like ball and forced it between my lips. My stomach lurched at the taste of iron and…and _guts_. I forced myself to keep chewing on the horrible block of bug, gumming away as one of the legs dripped out of my mouth.

"There has got to be something else to eat," I wheezed five minutes later, my hands on my knees and my heart thumping with hammer blows to my chest. Everything tasted like trash. I had no words.

How long passed as I trudged over the blasted landscape, my ears ringing with the sound of thunder? Minutes? Hours? Rock blended into rock as I clambered over boulders and tromped across cracked gray clay. For all I could tell, I might have died already and simply missed it. Maybe the three Lords had damned me to pacing this whole stupid wasteland forever, caught in the infinite nothingness between life and something less.

Exhaustion and thirst bore down on me as the sandpaper wind picked up again. I huddled against a crumbling stone obelisk perched on a hill of loose shale, clutching the dead boy's backpack to my chest and resting my weapon in my lap.

_Ping!_

I scratched my ear – I was hearing things now in between the artillery shots of thunder. My ear pinged again and I dug a finger into my ear canal. The last thing I needed was to lose my last vestiges of coherence out here.

_Ping!_

I looked up in anger, but insanity didn't descend on me. The wind blew a shiny silver parachute my way, crackling lightning reflected in its glistening fabric. A thick, bulging bundle covered in white wrapping dangled below from a trio of cords. I leapt to my feet and jumped to catch the bundle, grabbing it with both hands and clawing at the packaging like a crazed animal. It suddenly didn't matter what I looked like to the audience. Someone had given me something! Something, anything to relieve the tedium and doubt swirling around inside me was a godsend.

My spirits jumped as I pulled a fluffy brown blanket from the crinkling wrapping. It sure wasn't cold in the arena, and even though the blanket was a neutral color, it probably wouldn't do much for camouflaging me even if I was in immediate danger. When I pressed the soft cotton to my face and inhaled the sweet smell of lavender, however, I knew what the gift was. Finch and Daud wanted to lift my spirits, and clutching the fleece to my chest stirred a warm little flame in my heart that this bitter arena had extinguished from the moment I'd stepped off my platform at the Cornucopia. Just holding onto something gave me a flicker of hope.

Something inside the rolled-up blanket sloshed. Perplexed, I dug my hand into the fleece and pulled out a steel water bottle, splashing around a liquid inside. So they had given me something practical. I smiled just a bit as I took a sip of water that tasted better than the sweetest wine I'd drank back at the Capitol.

_Thank you, guys. Thank you._

I didn't realize sleep taking over until I woke up later, my hands still wrapped around the blanket. My fears snapped back on in an instant and I jammed the parachute, blanket, and water bottle into my backpack. I looked around, hoping no one had snuck up on me as I'd napped.

When I looked down at the wasteland flats stretching out towards the ruined city on the horizon, however, I saw my fear walking towards me amidst a storm of swirling sand and dust.

**/ / / / /**

Annie Odair always woke up early this time of the year.

It was worse this year. Now she was alone, with her husband Finnick and her son Drake off in the Capitol as victors. The Gamesmakers and rulers had left her alone ever since she'd won in the Hunger Games twenty-six years ago, but that reprieve didn't stop the loneliness she felt – or the nightmares that haunted her every hour. Normally Finnick would be there to help her through those times, to hold her, stroke her hair, and tell her everything would be alright in his arms. In past Games years, Drake would just sit with her when she struggled with her demons. He wouldn't say anything, just sit – but her son being there meant so much to the conflicted woman.

Now she had no one. Annie couldn't bear the darkness, so she woke with the rising sun and went to bed with its retreat behind the horizon of crashing waves.

A squadron of squawking gulls circled in the cloudless skies overhead as Annie shut the thick wooden door of her home in District 4's Victor's Village. A stray cat covered in gangly brown fur scampered away from her creaking front porch into the rotting wood of the abandoned house across the way. No one had ever lived in that thing: For all of District 4's success in the Hunger Games, never had victors filled every one of the Village's houses of peeling white paint and splinter-covered decks.

"No!"

Someone shouted to Annie's left. She swallowed a scream and clamped her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes and kneeling down on her porch. _Stop, stop, stop_! A head rolled along the ground in her mind, resting at her feet and spurting blood like a fountain from the neck. A pair of glazed sea green eyes pleaded with her.

But when Annie looked up, there was no one there. No one had shouted: Brooke Larsen's beefy pit bull next door woofed at her from the neighboring porch as it chewed on an old, bleached-white whale bone. Annie clutched at her arms. Even though the dog wagged its tail and panted like a happy kid as it pushed the bone from one paw to the other, its size and muscles intimidated her. Maybe Finnick and Drake liked Brooke and her mammoth of a dog, but Annie didn't want anything to do with the fiery victor next door.

Annie hurried away from the Village. She rushed off to nowhere in particular, eager to reach the dock markets that she'd be just as eager to leave later. There was no peace during the Games.

Annie scuffled down the dirt path towards District 4's docks. Sea foam sprayed up in the air along the tall, dark cliffs that overlooked a rocky beach of swirling tide pools, bleached driftwood, and salt-encrusted kelp that had dried out on the rocks overnight. She kicked tiny stones and shells out of her way and stared down at her sandals, tracing her shoes' fraying leather with her eyes. Already a pair of trawlers steamed out into the deep blue bay, en route to the vast ocean to the west and a day of scouring the sea for the district's life blood. The black-and-white striped lighthouse off in the distance called out one long, mournful note as the morning mist faded little by little with the advance of the sun.

It was home to Annie, but without her husband and son, all the little sights and sounds seemed a shade or two darker.

She didn't look up as the road widened and people passed her. Annie knew they looked over their shoulders and whispered things behind her back. Even after twenty-six years, she was still the _weird_ victor. She could talk like a normal person and she could blend in with any of them if she tried – but she couldn't when their eyes probed her up and down and their faces showed their disappointment in her. _Some showing you are_, she imagined them saying. _District 4 is a proud district. We deserve better from our best_.

She'd heard their other whispers, too. They weren't the whispers of _strange woman_, but the ones that wound their way through _blood_ and _ours_ and _independent_. Finnick had warned her not to listen to what so many of the people down at the docks said, but she couldn't ignore the growing energy that seethed in the district, particularly after the Cannery Pier riot back in February that had led to six bodies – one of them much too small – being sent off to the ocean's depths.

The whispers had only grown since then.

Annie was used to the crowds that gathered on the barnacle-covered docks in the mornings, but something was wrong today. A large group of people clustered in a semicircle around the edge of the nearest pier and ignored the crawling red crabs and dried seaweed leaves that tantalized from the market's storefronts. Some looked in shock, others scowled and talked amongst themselves, and all looked angry. Annie couldn't help herself. She hurried forward, craning her neck to get a glimpse of what everyone was gathered about.

A grizzled man with leathery brown skin and a hook-like scar across his left forearm stopped her a dozen feet away from the growing gathering. "Not the sight for you, miss," he growled. "You got enough to worry 'bout."

Annie slipped out of his grip. "Let me see, Rio," she said, struggling into the crowd.

The man sighed and stepped back as Annie pushed her way past a half-dozen men arguing with one another, their faces contorting with a cross of rage and nervousness and their words loud, angry, and full of swearing. Annie saw something small and bloated on the dock ahead. She pushed to the front of the circle and immediately lurched backwards, covering her ears and trying to drown out the horrible sight.

A girl, probably no more than nine, lay dead on the dock. The ocean had taken its toll: She was missing her left arm, bitten off at the shoulder by a shark or other denizen of the deep. Her skin was puffy and spongy from the water's assault. It'd eaten away at a nasty hole in her throat, just under her chin, as if someone had stabbed her. The fishermen perhaps could have explained it away if not for the message slathered in red paint on the plank above the corpse's head.

UNTO ALL INSURGENTS

Annie couldn't move. She couldn't get the horrid sight of her head, and a rush of memories attacked her mind with the ferocity of a swarm of killer bees. She only just heard the conversation next to her as a man said, "They just found her like this?"

"Someone put her there," another said. Annie recognized it as the older man who had tried to stop her – Rio West, one of the district's most respected boat captains. "Warning, maybe."

"From who?"

"Who do you think?" Rio snarled. "You think little girls are criminals? I'm not in a fighting mood this morning, and I'm loath to watch another riot take a few of our people. But it just makes you think that something should happen to the people who do things like this, huh?"

Annie shut her eyes tighter. The whispers were growing louder.


	14. Wanting Whatever

_**+ Shout out to Izziwolfy and ArtemisCarolineSnow for the reviews, and to everyone reading and following along! Another Terra-centric chapter here as we stick to the arena**__. __**Kinda short chapter, too.**_

**/ / / / /**

Why couldn't they just leave me alone?

My heart pounded as I watched a shadowy figure walking towards me as the wind kicked up, shrouding the newcomer in a veil of gray dust. The cloud glowed as lightning flashed behind it, but I couldn't make out a single detail about just who was headed my way. Boy, girl, powerhouse tribute or starving kid; I didn't know, and I didn't want to find out.

I'd been stupid to stay so long on the hill. I couldn't much go sprinting off in the other direction without the other kid seeing me – if he hadn't already – and I doubted I'd be able to outrun him anyway if he had supplies and a few good meals in his belly. My few drinks of water and bites of bug hadn't been enough to keep my muscles from tiring and my stomach from snarling out of angry neglect.

I needed to run, so naturally, I slipped to the ground and froze.

He had to have seen me. The kid closed in, and I pulled my crowbar to my chest. Despite the feeling of the hardened steel in my hands, I felt anything but powerful. I was vulnerable and alone out here. I'd killed the boy from District 7 on sheer luck, and if this tribute was any smarter, I had no chance. My legs refused to kick in even as every instinct screamed at me to run.

As the wind calmed and the dust settled, however, I saw that the new arrival wasn't a killer by the looks of it. My fear of dying at the hands of some brute faded away into a hollowing sort of anxiety, the kind of apprehension that turned my guts into a bubbling swamp.

The skinny, underfed boy from District 12 I'd first noticed back at the chariot parade plodded along through the scree field at the base of the hill. He'd seen me alright: The boy's steps slowed as he approached and he never let his gaze leave the top of the hill. I could just make out his face in the dim light. He didn't look any stronger than when I'd first seen him, and even though the boy had a backpack on, he didn't carry a weapon. The dust covering his every inch made him look like a wilting ghost out here on the wastes.

Would he seriously try to fight me? He was alone, unarmed, and as far as I could tell, he didn't have any trick up his sleeve. There was no way I could kill this kid. It wouldn't be self-defense, it'd be murder. Putting down the kid from District 7 had been bad enough, but at least I could justify it to my skeptical conscious. He'd had the upper hand, he'd come at me, and I'd done my best to play peacekeeper. There were no lies I could tell myself to justify beating this much smaller boy's brains in, even if he rushed me in a headlong suicide charge. I couldn't do it.

The boy, however, didn't look in the fighting mood. He stopped at the edge of the hill's incline, sat down, and unshouldered his pack. I frowned, confused. It had certainly looked like he'd seen me. As he rooted around in his pack for something, however, I crawled forward an inch and strained my eyes for a better look. The boy pulled out a small silver bag and tossed it a few feet up the hill. He glanced up at me for just a second before I understood the gesture. He wasn't looking to fight. He was offering me something.

_Trap!_ screamed an alarm in my head. _He's baiting you. You'll run down the hill all eager and he'll skewer you like a rat. Run away. Run away from this kid._

Yet in the back of my mind, some tiny whisper begging for someone else in this lonely hellscape forced me forward. I threw my backpack over a shoulder and held my crowbar aloft, careful to keep my eyes open for some secret danger the boy might have hidden. He tensed up when he saw my weapon, but he held his ground. I inched forward slowly but surely, no more than a foot at a time, keeping my eyes fixed on him. He had to be hiding something. He had to be waiting to strike me as soon as my guard fell.

A thought struck me. He'd tried to help me back at the fire-starting station in training. Ember – that was his name, Ember. He'd shown a friendly hand in training, and I'd run from it.

_Trick. Trap._

I slunk forward and snatched the plastic bag he'd tossed to the ground. The contents rattled when I shook it. Careful to keep an eye on Ember, I opened the zipped top of the bag and inhaled a rich nutty scent. After living on bugs and a few sips of water, the smell was almost enough to bring tears to my eyes.

This was the Hunger Games, and Ember was just giving food away.

I hefted my crowbar and backed up a step. "What d'you want for it?" I growled.

"It's not a trade," said Ember. He lowered his head, and darkness swept over his face. "Go ahead and have it."

"Did you poison it?"

He looked up at me without a word and frowned. _Can't be too careful,_ I thought. I pocketed the bag despite my overwhelming urge to chow down on every nut in the bag. "If it's alright, why don't you eat it?" I asked.

"I can't do something nice for someone?" he said, tossing a rock in the air. Thunder boomed as the stone hit the ground.

"We're supposed to be killing each other."

He raised an eyebrow and gave a little snort. "I don't think people like you and me are cut out for that kinda thing."

"I am," I said, sniffing and raising my chin. _He's luring you into a false sense of security, Terra, _I thought. _Pity the weak kid, and then he stabs you in the back of the neck. Get away from him while you still can._

He laughed with a skeptical, high-pitched giggle. "So you're some sort of trained killer?"

"Since yesterday. Or earlier. Whatever day it is."

"That's why you're acting like I'm going to jump you, then," he said, rolling his eyes. "You don't have to act all defensive. I'm not gonna hurt anyone. You're the one with the weapon. Where'd you get that?"

I paused and furrowed my brow. Ember thought I was playing tough. I couldn't figure out what this kid wanted. "Took it from the boy from 7. He attacked me first. Snake bit him. Then I did."

"You're serious?" he asked. His eyes widened, and for the first time, I saw that he, too, was serious. He wasn't playing me for a fool. His dirty, dust-streaked face, with its gaunt cheeks and narrow chin, was the picture of a boy who didn't want to be here. He wasn't a fighter.

It struck me as familiar.

Ember glanced behind him and slumped his shoulders, as if resigning himself to whatever came next. "You gonna kill me too, then?" he asked.

I tightened my grip on my crowbar. _Survivors don't pass up opportunities,_ I thought. It'd be best to get rid of any competition now, especially when I had the advantage. I doubted I'd get the same chance again. Instead of swinging at his head, however, I reached in my pocket, dug out the bag of nuts, and shoved a fistful of them into my mouth.

I sat down and pressed the blood-stained end of the crowbar into the ground, resting my hands on the other end. I kept a few feet from Ember, and I could still react if he tried something, but from the way relief swept across his face, I figured he was happy to have someone who just wanted to talk. Funny thing. "Why'd you come at me?" I asked.

"Didn't see you had that," he mumbled. He paused and waved a hand in the air as if trying to find the right way to phrase his next words. "I'm also…I just…I'm sick of being alone out here."

That hit me with a pang of guilt for thinking he was waiting to backstab me. I was lonely, and here was just another kid from the districts who felt the same thing. Our situations could have been flipped so easily: I could have been some poor, underfed girl from District 12 and he could have come from a decent lifestyle in modest District 5, and we still both would have felt the same thing in here.

I glanced down at my half-eaten bag of nuts. I hadn't prepared for having someone else around in the arena. "Does this mean we're like…a, you know…"

"We're just whatever," he said.

That was fine by me. Team, alliance, whatever. I could do whatever.


	15. The Edge of Chaos

_**+ Another big thanks to super-reviewer ArtemisCarolineSnow, RadioFreeDeath, and Izziwolfy! Seriously, feedback is awesome, and I'm always happy to hear what you guys think of the story! As a note, the arena action from the end of this chapter on out is going to ramp up significantly – just a heads-up, as some of the stuff I have planned for the wasteland isn't exactly sunshine and butterflies. Or the Hunger Games version of sunshine and butterflies.**_

**/ / / / /**

"Where'd you get all this stuff? The Cornucopia?"

Ember's backpack was a wormhole to some infinite dimension of supplies. He had enough food to last for days, along with thin, tightly-wound black rope, a log-like hunk of pink clay that he said worked as a fire source, a flint, and more. The only thing he was missing was a weapon, but I felt ten times better for everything he'd picked up.

"I didn't stick around the Cornucopia," Ember said, packing everything back up. "My mentor told me not to."

"Huh. Smart mentor, I guess."

"He's actually kind of a dick. Haymitch. He's probably forgotten me."

Hearing Ember curse surprised me more than listening to his worries about his mentor. "Maybe he's just reserved."

"Definitely not that. But I got this at the ruins. That whole place is loaded with supply drops."

That made me angry. I'd run from the ruins, fearing that danger lurked all around them, only to find nothing but bugs and rocks. If I hadn't stumbled into Ember, I'd have been in serious trouble finding anything more to eat, much less anything to give me a leg up out here.

"So why'd you come this way?" I asked, playing with my blanket in my lap as we talked. According to my new…friend? Ally? Whatever Ember was, he'd been hiking awhile and wanted a short rest. I certainly wasn't in any hurry to get a move on. "I haven't found anything out here. Just rocks and snakes and stuff."

He frowned and looked off at the dark hills. "Ran into trouble."

"What kinda trouble?"

"District 1 kind. Those two found me. I ran off."

I ran my fingers over a stone I'd been playing with. There really wasn't anywhere safe out here. The stone ruins had supplies I desperately needed but apparently had lured the other tributes in. Out here I'd survived so far, and I could see danger a mile away – but would I just wither and die on these plains?

"Maybe it'd be better to stay out here, then," I ventured. "Maybe there's some supplies I haven't found. It's at least a little safer when we can see people coming from a long ways away."

"Safe?" he scoffed. "There is no safe."

"I mean, besides the one kid I ran into, there hasn't been anything else out here. We'll be safer than running to trouble."

Ember looked frustrated. His face took on an odd sort of complexion, as if he were ten years older, his eyes seeming to sag and shadows crossing across his chin. Maybe it was a trick of the light here in the eternal dusk of the arena, but I got the feeling that Ember was a kid who'd grown up too fast in whatever District 12 was.

"There's nowhere safe," he repeated.

I slumped my shoulders. I'd run into others inevitably, and I doubted all them would be as peaceful as Ember – but I wanted to stave that moment off as long as possible. This place frightened me, and every little fear instinct in my head told me to shut down and stay put. Yet doubt gnawed away at my conviction. Elan's advice tainted my thoughts: _Stand out. Make yourself memorable._ There sure wasn't anything to sell about a girl who had walked along the rocky fields since this whole thing kicked off.

I didn't want to make this decision.

"What d'you wanna do?" I asked, kicking a stone between my feet and staring at the ground.

Ember's eyes widened, and he pointed off into the distant dark sky. "I'm not staying out here. Look."

An abomination floated between dark storm clouds maybe a quarter-mile off. It certainly wasn't something I'd ever seen: A great gas bag, as large as a house and robed in a hide of purple leather, floated through the air, moaning with a terrible baritone cry. Bulbous black tumors scattered about its skin discharged sickly green puffs of gas, and the gas bag jetted forward with each exhale. I couldn't spot a mouth or eyes or any other familiar opening, but that haunting wail it made sent a swarm of goosebumps jumping to attention on the back of my neck.

If the sight and sound of the horrid thing weren't bad enough, it was bringing danger with it, too. Lightning struck the gas bag every two or three seconds and coursed over the monster's body, shooting out of a cluster of jellyfish like tendrils dangling from its bottom. Deadly bolts blasted the ground in explosions of white and electric blue – and they were coming closer.

"What the hell is that?" Ember said, his voice quivering.

I didn't want to say hello. Snatching up my crowbar and backpack, I grabbed Ember's arm and took off at a sprint. I had no idea where to go, but I knew I wanted to get away from whatever the heck was coming our way.

"Where are we going?" Ember shouted. I didn't answer: The blasted plains rushed by me as I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Something exploded behind me and the landscape flashed with a blinding white glow. My hair stood on end, and the gas bag moaned with another low, mourning cry.

_Bang!_

"You alright?" I yelled to Ember. I glanced back as my ally's eyes widened as large as dinner plates. The gas bag had made up ground in a hurry: In less than a minute it had risen on top of us. The creature's wrinkled carapace clenched and shriveled above. A scaly black tumor shot out a cloud of gas, and I struggled to keep myself from choking against the stark smell of sulfur. My throat burned.

Something roared up ahead. I stumbled forward to the lip of a hill of scree, where below, a whitewater river probably fifty feet wide raged. Small stone outcroppings loomed on the other side, the first ruins of the great necropolis that towered on the horizon. Violet lightning crackled ahead as loud bangs sounded behind me.

"Wait, wait, wai-" I stammered as Ember ran into me.

We both tumbled down the hill. Loose rocks rushed around me as the world turned over again and again. Sparks raced past my eyes, and another blast of lightning from the gas bag blinded me as I fell head over heels down the rubble field. With an _oof_, I collapsed in a heap at the bottom, my backpack digging into my side and my fist clenched in a death grip around my crowbar. At least I hadn't lost anything.

I rubbed dust out of my eyes and recoiled as I saw the river in front of me. Dark water rushed in an angry torrent, with the hill behind me and the raging river in front of me. I couldn't see a way around, and the only other option meant running straight into the hail of lightning bolts the gas creature was sending our way from the rear.

I sure as heck wasn't getting across the river on my own.

"Ember?" I cried as my newfound ally got to his feet, clawing at his shoulder to scrub bits of rock away. "Ember, I can't swim."

He clutched his pack tighter to his shoulders and glanced back at the hill. The gas creature was closing in fast, its lightning bolts already blasting at the top of the scree hill. "Neither can I," he said. "See if we can go around, maybe there's a –"

"There isn't an around!"

Something stirred at my feet before I could argue further. Dust pushed aside as a slimy pale noodle inched its way out of the ground, coiling up in a ball and hissing. A mucous-covered snake longer than I was tall stretched out along the ground behind Ember and I, leaving a trail of translucent ooze on every rock it touched. It reared up three feet into the air. Its head was something born of nightmares, a smooth, rounded globe divided into two sacs that spat and rattled as it curled up into the air.

Ember backpedaled towards the river as the mucous snake hissed at me. Its head divided into a hideous flower, splitting into two flat, triangular flanges lined with bony needles. I leapt out of the way just in time as the creature lunged at me, snapping at the air a millisecond after I'd moved.

"Just jump!" Ember shouted. "Dive into the river!"

"But I can't swim!" I screamed as the snake coiled in front of me, hissing and rattling as it slithered forward. Another _bang_ of lightning lit up an explosion of rock and light from the hilltop.

"Terra!"

I jumped. The snake lunged at me a half-second after I leaped toward the river, and a lightning explosion sent a shower of rock shards flying after me.

_Sploosh!_

_Cold!_ I tensed up as I dove into the frigid water, but before I knew what hit me, the current swept me away. I flailed like a drowning insect against the incredible force of the river. My head burst over the surface and I gulped in air. All I had was a moment before the water dragged me under its dark surface again, blacking out the lights as I tumbled over and over in the cold, wet, howling tunnel.

"_Guh!_" I sucked in another gulp of air as I surfaced. The river roared around me, a wail of demons screaming in both ears as I lost myself in its grasp. I struggled to reach for a passing rock, missed, and submerged for another second before a towering rock rushed at me.

I didn't even get the chance to scream. My head collided with the stone and the darkness rushed in.

**/ / / / /**

"Come to bother me too?"

Cyrus gritted his teeth as he pushed past the doors to Creon Snow's office. He hadn't been the first to see Panem's leader about the situation in District 4, it seemed. Everything seemed peaceful in here: Golden afternoon sunlight shined in through the scarlet-and-violet stained glass behind Creon's mahogany desk, casting a picturesque array of light and color on the wall behind him. The rocky alpine peaks of the Capitol looked radiant, their sun-dried cliffs stoic and strong as a backdrop to the silver towers of the Capitol that glimmered behind the balcony of the spacious room. Even Creon himself loomed regal in the sunlight, his gaunt face bathed in shadow, contrasted against his sun-bathed crimson suit. He'd turned off the television that hung up in the far right corner of the room, hanging above the stylized bronze statue of a Dark Days warrior. No Hunger Games here; the violence the people sought had stayed on the streets.

Yet this place was anything but peaceful, for Panem's twelve districts weren't all feeling so.

"Not to bother," Cyrus said, clasping his hands behind his back and taking a step forward. "Counseling. It's my job title."

Creon leaned back in his seat. In the afternoon glare, his grey stands stood out just a bit clearer than usual. "So counsel me," he said, tossing his pen on his desk. "You going to say I shouldn't be hasty? That a protest in District 4 over some dead girl washed up on the docks shouldn't be met with force? Taurus agreed that I should come out swinging."

_Uh-oh_. Cyrus held out his hand, sucked in his breath, and said, "Taurus is an aggressive man. Doesn't mean you have to be. You've only been in office six months. You can show them mercy, show them that you can negotiate – "

"Talk?" Creon folded his arms and laughed. "These people only respect strength, Cyrus! A band of them rush out on the streets, shouting slander, and you want me to talk to them? If I look weak, they don't respect me. You and I both know what that leads to."

"Doesn't mean –"

"My father kept order during the riots in District 11 and 8 with force. It's worked before."

"And your father is dead!" Cyrus said, letting his voice get away from him as anger bubbled up within. He wasn't angry at Creon. He respected the man – but his opponents had gotten to him first, and he had no doubt that Taurus had his own goals in mind in convincing the President to shed blood on the streets of District 4 after the prior day's protest. What a nightmare: Some commoner girl, the daughter of a cannery worker, had washed up bloated and with a slit neck near the docks. One little spark, that's all it took to kick off a near-riot. Force would only make things worse.

Cyrus took a breath and went on: "You've said it yourself: You want to make your own name, not rule as the son of Coriolanus Snow. Show that you can be merciful. Don't just rush onto the streets of District 4 with Peacekeepers and bullets, or those people will only grow angrier. That district's already on the verge of boiling over. We need to let it simmer down or we'll have a much worse problem on our hands. You tell me what's worse: Showing some compassion, or having a full-scale district revolt on our hands?'

"And where are they going to take these…these niceties you want?" Creon said, sweeping his hand over his desk and frowning. Cyrus hated when he did that: The man's eyebrows furrowed like a hawk's gaze, as if he could attack Cyrus's very soul with his stare alone. "You think a few kind words will make them feel good? I won't give them any special treatment just because they're mad. I'm not going to exempt them from the Games, or decide tesserae counts double in District 4. Every district gets the same helping."

_Well, not exactly._ Cyrus held back from saying the intricacies of Panem that he knew, but the new President didn't: The districts _didn't _receive equal shares. District 4 already had it much better than 8 and 11, which had rioted during Coriolanus's time after decades of hardship and crushing poverty. Shows of strength had maintained order then, but Cyrus wasn't confident the same strategy would work forever. Better to bring the districts under the Capitol's banner with an open hand rather than a closed fist – as long as it kept the peace, it was worth it.

"Let me go there," Cyrus said, leaning over on Creon's desk and clenching his fist. "If I can't do anything, then send in as many Peacekeepers as Taurus wants. But there's a man there, a Rio West, holds a lot of sway with the lower workers. He's even on good standings with the victors, including the Odairs."

Creon pursed his lips. "You just know this man?"

"Technically speaking, I know of him through Lucrezia Bierce's spies," Cyrus said. _At least that shrew was good for something. _"Doesn't matter. I do know him, I've talked with the man, and he knows me. Give me a chance to smooth things over. Progress is a lot easier when we're not shooting at each other."

Creon ran a hand through his hair. His hairline was receding by the day: Running this fracturing nation was taking its toll. "We're on the same side here, Cyrus. You don't need to tell me that," he said. "Fine. You think you can convince this…this man who commands respect in District 4 to calm things down? Take a shot. But if you can't, then I won't hesitate to flatten them. This Rio West, Finnick Odair, it doesn't matter. I'll keep what's mine."


	16. A Killer's Choice

_**+ Thanks for another great review, ArtemisCarolineSnow!**_

**/ / / / /**

Well, I wasn't dead. Wet, hot, bruised, sure – but not dead.

I crouched on all fours on the black mud of the riverbank, somewhere far downriver from where Ember and I had jumped in. My lungs heaved, and I choked up a stew of snot, water, and dust. Ember wrung out a sock next to me, his face as blank as if he'd been doing the laundry for the last hour. He sure didn't look like a kid who didn't know how to swim.

After coughing out the last bit of phlegm I could muster, I flopped over on my side and laid my cheek in the mud. _Ugh._ "Did I win yet?" I moaned into the muck.

"No, we died and came back as mutts," Ember said, concentrating on dumping water out of his boots. "Now we're stuck here forever. You. Me. Mutt matrimony."

I couldn't help but laugh. My ribs hurt and my lungs protested, but it felt good to have something to smile about.

It beat what lay ahead: Fifty yards down a sloping hill dotted with long, pale, needle-like grass stood a pair of flat, crumbling black stones, with a broken archway spanning the two. Behind them, shadowy gray buildings rose out of the dust, dark and decrepit. Here and there glossy black obelisks jutted out of the dirt in the wide pathways between ruins. Around them, an off-green haze drifted out, speckled with tiny black dots that floated like spores of pollen in the wind. Taller buildings rose off in the distance, some of them topped with angry jagged spires and broken stone keeps. The whole place smelled of antiquity with the same the musky odor of an abandoned hut.

The mood changed quickly in this arena.

"Looks like a great place," I muttered. "Guess we should get a move on."

Ember shivered. "Now that I'm back here, I really just do not want to go into those ruins," he said, his voice small and quiet. "Tumbling in the river sounds like more fun."

"Just 'cuz of other tributes in there?"

"Who knows what all is in that. But other kids too, yeah."

"We gotta run into them eventually."

"Yeah, well, I'm not very eager to die."

I frowned. The little things Ember said frustrated me. "There's two of us now," I said. "You helped me out with supplies, and I can help you out, too."

"With what, killing guys?"

"If they try to kill us, then yeah. We'll kill 'em first."

Ember bit his lip and chuckled ever so slightly. "I don't think I'm going to be doing any of that."

"Ember, we're in the freakin' Hunger Games," I said, raising my voice and digging my heel into the mud. "Only one person goes home. Whoever lives is gonna have to kill someone else. I mean, I wanna go home."

"Is that how they tell you this works to make it sound better in District 5?"

"It _is_ how it works!"

"I bet that kid you killed thought that, too."

"He didn't give me a whole lotta choices."

"I dunno, wasn't there. But maybe you could have run, played dead, just forced him away rather than killing him…give me some time and I probably could come up with more choices."

My fist clenched around a clump of mud. Ember hadn't been there in that pit, with the boy from 7 headed my way. He hadn't heard the snake hissing. The boy would've killed me. If I'd just left him after the snakebite, he could've gotten better, come after me again – something. I don't know. I had to do it. Had to kill him. Had to. I didn't really have a choice.

"Let's just go," I grumbled, shaking water off of my pack and hoisting it back on my shoulders. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. It's over."

Ember sighed. "Fine. And it's not just other kids I'm worried about in the ruins. There was something else in there."

"Something else?"

"A hovercraft dropped something not long after things got going. I thought it was supplies, so I rushed deeper into the ruins to check it out…turned out there wasn't anything there but tracks in the mud. Weird ones."

That sent a shiver up my back. "What kinda weird?"

"Almost like a person, but not quite. I dunno. Just something to watch out for."

Something clicked behind the broken archway. I spun my head, exhaled, and said, "Keeping our eyes open sounds like a good idea."

It didn't take much hiking for the dotted ruins to open up into the recognizable outskirts of some long-dead city. Roofless stone huts gaped up at the black sky. Patches of worn cobblestone street cut through the dust and hard earth. The haze I'd seen earlier coalesced around some of the buildings, giving off enough more than enough light to see where we were going but seeping into stone cracks with a nauseous hue. Along with the frequent flashes of lightning, the light made this whole place feel as if some ghost lingered on in the dead ruins, whispering of a life forgotten.

"Hey. Check this," Ember said, the suddenness nearly giving me a heart attack. He waved a shiny piece of plastic at me. "Someone else's been here."

My heart thumped with the pounding blows of a sledgehammer. "Great. You don't even look fazed by this place."

He shrugged, his face as calm as if he'd been taking a midnight stroll under a full moon. "Well, I am, uh, fazed. Just good at hiding it. I'm used to the dark, anyway. My house back home only gets a couple hours of power every night."

"What?"

"Yeah, boo-hoo. We're poor back home."

I crouched against the side of a building and clutched my crowbar. If we were going to chat, I didn't want to be moving. One thing at a time in this place.

"Your family just mine coal?" I said. "I mean, District 12, coal mining…"

"Yeah. Well, my dad. I don't have any more family. It doesn't really pay him enough, and he doesn't, uh…like you said, there's not a whole lot of options back home."

I looked away. District 5 wasn't the wealthiest place in the world – it certainly wasn't the Capitol – but most people still had enough to eat, and power didn't last just a few hours a day. Mining coal sounded a whole lot less interesting and a whole lot more soul-sucking than working on the power plants, too.

Picking at my thumbnail, I whispered, "Did you know your mom?"

Ember wasn't kidding about hiding his feelings. Whatever he thought of my intrusive question, his face didn't flinch an inch. "Yeah," he said. "Had two big sisters for a while, too. Two years ago a big wave of pox rolled through the district and killed a bunch of people. Guess I'm lucky I'm alive still, but it doesn't feel that way."

He closed his eyes and grinned. "But the odds are in my favor. It's good. I'm ecstatic."

"I'm sorry," I said. I didn't know what else to say. We barely knew each other, and here he was opening up about his brutish past to me.

"Doesn't matter now," Ember said with a shrug and a sardonic laugh. "Besides, one of my sisters was kind of a sissy. Raine wouldn't like watching all this fun we're having."

On that somber note, we picked up our trek deeper into the ruins. Step by step the black sand wastes fell behind and this urban necropolis opened up all around us. I found myself checking every corner we turned and peeking into the darkness within every yawning hut. I clutched my crowbar and looked around a pair of stone pillars when Ember yanked me back.

"Hear that?" he whispered.

I shook my head, but a second later I heard it. Somewhere down the narrow, debris-strewn path in front of us, something was wheezing.

Rocks clacked to my left, from around the side of a dilapidated stone yurt. The haze dissipated around a mound of jagged, broken iron struts, torn patches of cloth, and chipped granite bricks in the dust ahead. It was hard to see through the rubble and the darkness, and I squinted to get a better look as I crept forward. I felt Ember trudging along an inch behind me, his breath hot on the back of my neck.

I missed my footing, stumbled, and landed on a broken pile of stones. _Crack!_ A surprised croak echoed from the other side of the rubble, and taking advantage, I hurdled over the last pile of rubble in the way and held my crowbar up, ready to attack.

A brilliant white light blinded me. I shouted and jumped back, thrusting my weapon at dead air before something started laughing. I backpedaled, ready to strike out again, but the flashlight shined away – up at the face of the kid who was pointing it, slouched against a blood-stained rock.

"Believe this," said a familiar voice. "What a shitty coincidence."

I gasped. It was Glenn.

My district partner huddled against his rock, but he didn't look like the same person I'd ridden into the Capitol with. Almost half of his face had been torn off, with the skin shredded into a bloody tarp from just below his right eye down to his chin. A gaping puncture wound in his right chest leaked a diseased yellow fluid around a scabby crust of blackened blood. Glenn's skin was as pale as a sheet of paper, and his chest heaved with quick, labored breaths. Something – or someone – had ripped him apart.

Ember vaulted over the rubble, saw Glenn, and looked as if he wanted to jump right back over. "Oh, what the…" he whispered.

Glenn looked up at him, coughed up a spray of blood, and laughed with a hoarse, cynical chuckle. "Guess you got over making friends."

"You know this guy?" Ember asked, his eyes as wide as watermelons.

I nodded, still in shock at the sight. "Yeah, I…he's my district partner. Glenn, what happened?"

He choked again. Glenn leaned to his right and spat up a wad of blood, bile, and slime, hacking onto the rock until he was through. "Somethin' weird around here. Something big and ugly and it's not a kid. Gods, this hurts. Tried to fight it. Didn't work so good."

"Look," I said, waving my hands in front of me and glancing around. "We can…I can try and patch that up, or do something to stop it from getting infected…"

Glenn wheezed and shook his head. "Don't think so."

"Glenn, I'm not just going to leave you there!"

"This ain't getting better," he said, his voice trailing off into little more than a whisper. "Earned my trip to the Flame Gates already. I just want you to send me there a lil' faster."

He glanced at my crowbar and looked back up into my eyes. Realization snaked its way into my guts. He didn't want me to help him – not on this world, anyway. He wanted me to kill him.

Ember figured it out just as I did. "Terra," he said, his voice trembling. "He's going to go into shock soon. You don't have to kill him."

"_Fuck_ this kid," Glenn spat with a last ounce of malice. "You said you want to go home, Terra. I'm going where I belong. Make it easier on both of us."

"Don't listen to that," Ember said, taking a step towards me and reaching out a hand. "Don't be any more of a murderer. He's not threatening either of us. He's going to die anyway. Let's just walk away."

Glenn coughed and clutched his stomach. "You wanna do some good here?" he gasped. "C'mon Terra. Don't make me beg."

I exhaled and hefted my crowbar. "Ember, don't look," I said.

"No. Terra, you've got a choice here," he said.

"I really don't," said, gritting my teeth. "Glenn…good luck, okay?"

My district partner closed his eyes and said, "Nicest thing I've ever heard. You too, Terra."

Ember bit his lip, stepped back, and looked away. I raised my weapon. At the last moment, Glenn smiled.


	17. Above and Below

_**+ Shout out to ArtemisCarolineSnow and QuirkyIntrovert15 for the two wonderful reviews, and big thanks again to everyone following and reading along! Sorry for the long wait for this chapter as well; originally this was going to be two chapters, but I decided to merge them after I cut out some excess. Also, some weird ish goes down in this chapter. It does have meaning! It's not just weird for weird's sake, although I'm certainly capable of that, too.**_

**/ / / / /**

The white peaks of the mountains surrounding the Capitol shrank into the eastern horizon, their rocky ascents lit up with the orange light of the setting sun. Cyrus nursed a glass of gin and gazed out of the window of the train, trying his best to drown out Cicero Templesmith's excited jabbering from the television mounted on the wall of the lounge car. The juniper smell of the gin was putting him to sleep. The train wouldn't make it to District 4 until the morning, and he wasn't in any mood to watch tributes battle it out in the arena. He'd have turned off the live screening if it wasn't for his traveling companion.

"Just vile!" Julian Tercio said, leaning forward in his seat, shoving a handful of grapes in his mouth, and sticking out his tongue in mock disgust. "That boy from District 4 is absolutely a bull. Goring that girl from 6 in the heart like that – mmm, gruesome, but I can't stop watching the replay. From that reverse angle, it's just like an explosion of gore."

"We'd all be happier if you kept your recap to yourself," Cyrus groaned, taking another swig of gin and wishing he could jump out the window and magically arrive in District 4.

Julian laughed. "Just you. Does party-pooping run in your family?"

"Two people on a train isn't much of a party."

"Big enough for me," said Julian. He ran a hand through his mop-like mane of hair and leaned back, rolling a grape between his thumb and index finger. "Besides, it'd do you good to get festive. You're going to District 4! Reigning champs. Good food. Consider it a vacation."

Cyrus scowled at him. "You know damn well why I'm going. Someone needs to smooth over things before tensions turn into real violence."

"So if they're already uptight, and you're uptight…how well do you think that's going to work out?" Julian said, rolling his eyes. "People get mad, Cyrus! If they were serious about their demonstrations in 4, Taurus would just roll in hovercraft. People get mad, they get it out of their system, they get drunk, they say some things they shouldn't, they fuck, it all gets out of their system. Maybe if we let that happen rather than overreacting so much, this wouldn't be a problem."

"Then tell Creon that."

"Oh, like he'll listen to me. He'll listen to you."

"I'm a little worried he's listening more to Taurus these days."

Julian laughed and tossed a grape at a chrome cup seated on the glass-inlaid wooden table in the center of the room. The fruit bounced off the rim and rolled into a dark corner of the cabin to collect dust. "Look at you. Cyrus Locke, Coriolanus Snow's right hand man, moaning about how Snow two-point-oh thinks his rival offers better advice."

"Big words from you," Cyrus snarled. He didn't need snarky insults from the Capitol's logistics architect, of all people.

"At least I laugh along with my detractors," Julian said. "I wish they'd come up with something new. 'Julian Tercio. Lazy man runs off with his parents' money and estate. He's only got his job because of them. Shame they're dead.' Helps that they're right. But hey, they should try keeping a city of three million running on a daily basis. At least I won't have to hear them complain when they clog the sewage grid again while I'm in District 1…for a week…oh, I wish it were two weeks."

Julian squinted at the television and snatched a cream-covered pastry off of the table. The train lurched, and his attempt to bite into the confection smeared frosting across his chin. As he scooped it off with his hand, he pointed up at the screen and said, "Not taking things too well, is she?"

In the Hunger Games studio, Cicero Templesmith feigned pity as Terra huddled against a mound of rubble and bawled her eyes out. The bloody splotch of Glenn's blood glistened in the flash of a lightning strike.

"Can you believe I sponsored her?" Julian said. "What a waste of my money. Elan Triste is a real con man."

"Is this all you do with your money?" Cyrus scoffed. "Throw it at the Hunger Games?"

"Well, I also host parties I don't attend. But don't sound so cynical. Maybe I saved little Terra Pike's life. Although given the display we're watching, probably not."

"I'm sure that's why you did it. Goodness of your heart."

"Oh, I'm a paragon of virtue, Cyrus," Julian said. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and lowering his brow. "But I did get some tidbits out of Elan, in any case, and maybe it wasn't such a waste. I'm guessing you already know we're working closer with this year's victor going forward?"

Cyrus frowned. Considering where he'd heard that, he guessed who'd been dumb enough to let that secret slip. _Mental note: Do not tell anything private to the Head Gamesmaker_. "I do. Can't say I'm happy about it."

"Come on," Julian said with a wry smile. "You're a smart guy. You at least have principles, even if you stick to them like glue. I like you a helluva lot more than Taurus and Lucrezia. Now, we're going to be working with the victor. That means, just like Creon, there's going to be a lot of people in his – or her – ear. You consider that whoever wins might be a little more sympathetic to a sponsor who helped them get out of the arena alive?"

Julian stuck his thumb towards the screen as Terra cradled her face in her hands. "Just something to think about."

**/ / / / /**

I had to do it. I had no choice. It would have been worse if I hadn't killed him. Glenn wanted to die. Wanted to. It was mercy. I did good.

Every consolation I could think up couldn't wash away the pain. Maybe it was the way Ember looked as if he were worried I'd kill him next, or how I couldn't look away from the bloodstain on the rocks until I'd forced myself to get away from that place. It hadn't hurt so badly when I'd fought off the boy from 7, but this time…this time the weight of what I'd done had come crashing down with the force of every blast of lightning raining down from the sky.

Ember knelt nearby as I lay in the dust beside our smoldering fire. He played with his thumbs, turning them over and over while throwing the occasional glance my way. "Terra?" he asked, his voice soft and hesitant. "You alright to get moving?"

I shook my head. The red and gold flames took away some of the pain of this place. I didn't want to wade through the darkness again to get…to go where? Neither of us had a clue where we were going, or even what we were doing. Glenn had been right: Three measly days of training had been nothing but a joke. We weren't prepared.

Something squeaked outside. Ember flinched as if someone had come to bash his skull in, too. To calm him down, I struggled up on me feet and picked up my crossbow. "I'll go look," I said. He didn't argue.

I bumped my shoulder into the wall of the burnt-out hut we squatted in, swore, and nearly stepped on a fat black rat. The animal skittered about, its four little legs hustling like a butterfly's wings as it hurried to nowhere in particular. The animal chirped and squealed: Something had spooked it. Off to my left down the debris-strewn street that bisected the ruins, a shadow fidgeted. I rubbed my eyes, squinted, and froze.

A hundred – hundreds – of rats rushed down the path, rushing in a giant wave towards me like some horrible, disease-ridden flood.

"Ember?" I said. "Ember, we should go."

"Why?"

"Get your stuff and let's go! Now!"

The air thickened with the smell of bile and rotting meat. I gagged, covering my mouth and turning away as Ember hurried out of the hut. His eyes bulged.

"Just follow them," he said, pointing towards the rats.

I didn't get a chance to reply. The most horrifying noise I had ever heard, something that sounded halfway between a rusty iron door closing and a coyote baying at the full moon, howled from somewhere down the road. Whether the wail that warbled in and out of clarity was a war cry, a warning, or something else entirely befuddled me. I only knew I wanted no part of it. Ember was already sprinting down the broken cobblestone when I broke out into a run. Rats skittered around my feet, their furry bodies bumping and grazing my ankles.

Ember stopped dead in his tracks at an intersection, and I stumbled over my feet to keep myself from slamming into him. A hot wind raked the back of my neck.

"Which way?" Ember asked. Down the road to our right, the stony ruins faded away into dunes of black sand in the distance. Crumbling watch towers and time-worn tenements decayed to our left as the city grew denser.

"Deeper into the ruins!" I panted, dashing left. My thighs burned, and I prayed we could find a hiding spot among the nooks and shadows of the dead city. The rats burst off in every direction, some slipping into tiny grates hewn into the broken street, others scampering up ruined facades.

Left, right, forward – the world blended into a rush of amorphous black and gray as I ran headlong into the necropolis. A shower of lighting erupted in the distance as a pair of moaning gas bags floated over the ruins. Getting shocked seemed like a nicer fate than whatever was causing that nauseating smell behind me, however. I struggled to keep my stomach's contents down as I ran.

_Crack!_

Ember dashed ahead of me just as the ground gave out beneath my feet. I stumbled and flailed in the air as stones tumbled into the break below. At the last second I reached out, snatching a hold with one hand with my legs dangling in the air.

"Terra!" Ember shouted, bounding backwards and reaching down to help. "Gimme your hand!"

I reached up as my handhold slipped. Flailing, I whipped my hands out in front of me until I grabbed a smaller nook right at the edge of the fracture. A rushing sound echoed in the hole below – water, or something worse. Ember hurried forward, but another long, mournful howl from whatever was chasing us stopped him in his tracks. He glanced up, his eyes gaping, his lips parted in uncertainty and fear.

"Go!" I said, looking below me. I didn't think the fall would hurt me: Maybe fifteen feet below me, a slow-flowing dark fluid coursed through a stone aqueduct. "Ember, just go! I'll meet up with you!"

He bit his lip, glanced back down the street, and dashed away. I was alone again, but if I didn't hurry, something – or someone – far worse would be on me in seconds. Sucking in my breath, I let go of my handhold and plunged into the darkness below.

_Splash!_

_Cold! _The water was freezing! I hit the ground and fell onto my side, spitting and choking as I scrambled to my feet. At least it was only water. I didn't have time to think about my surroundings, however. My crowbar had fallen down into the underground with me, fortunately, so I grabbed my weapon, steadied my resolve, let out a loud exhale, and charged into the dimly-lit corridor ahead.

A sea green glow lit up the subterranean passage. Spores like the ones I'd seen earlier collected all about the tunnel, but in much thicker clouds than the ones that had coalesced around the obelisks above. They smelled of dust and mildew, filling my mouth with the taste of stale bread and old cheese. Greasy ooze dripped from the walls into the water, and tiny lights swam about around my feet. I gripped my weapon tightly and pushed ahead as the corridor turned, cutting me off from any sign of the danger above – and from sight of the sky. I was alone, and I was trapped underground in a graveyard's catacombs.

The tunnel didn't change the further I walked, but the haze and the spores intensified – and my head clouded up more and more with every step I took. After several minutes, it felt as if I was swimming through the air. My eyelids drew down as if weighed by anchors, and I missed my footsteps and stumbled. Macabre shadows danced in front of me in the haze. They were images and people I felt on the verge of picking out, their identities slipping away from my mind's grasp with inches to spare. I heaved and panted in the thickening haze and plowed forward. I had to keep going. I couldn't go back: If I went back, who knew what would emerge to terrorize me from the darkness? I had to keep going through this stuff. Had to. I didn't have a choice.

No choice.

I rounded a bend in the tunnel as the walls leaked gallons of pus. The current underfoot tripped me up, and I slipped onto my hands – but when I looked up, something had changed. I'd stepped into a large, rectangular chamber with an arching ceiling lit up by a swirling cloud of the green haze. It wasn't the most drastic change, however. I wasn't alone anymore.

A girl no taller than my hip watched me from the center of the room. She didn't look more than about five years old, but from her dark brown ponytail to her deep blue eyes and her blue polka-dotted dress, she looked familiar. It was strange. I'd had a dress just like that years ago. The girl held a finger up to her lips and shook her head, backpedaling away from me towards a corner of the chamber.

My mind swirled, but something about the whole situation struck me as oddly normal, as if I expected her to be there. None of it seemed out of place, and for a moment, I forgot I was even in the Hunger Games entirely. I didn't feel much of anything, like I was some observer watching life play out in front of me. My head lurched in confusion.

A stomping sound made the girl jump, and she spun away from me. The glow from the spores lit up a tall figure in the corner. It was a man dressed in a ratty shirt covered in red dust, his hands clutching a plastic half-gallon jug filled to the brim with a milky white liquid. I sniffed, and the old, familiar smell of palm wine took me another step away from the cobblestone ruins. Something about this man was familiar too, even if I couldn't see his face. Maybe it was the way his veins popped out on his tired, weathered hands, looking all the more prominent in the hazy light, or perhaps the slow, steady, deliberate way he turned towards the little girl who trembled before him.

_Don't turn around all the way_, I thought. He couldn't turn around. Something terrible would happen if he turned around.

The girl shook, as if she knew what was coming next. The green glow glistened in the man's dead white eyes. He dropped his jug to the ground, and it rolled towards me – _sploosh, sploosh, sploosh._ Fear coursed through my veins. _Don't say anything. Don't make him mad. If you get his attention, you'll make him hurt you._

The girl pulled on the man's pant leg.

A gaping hole ripped open in the man's face, howling like the wind in the midst of a towering dust storm back home. Cockroaches tumbled out of the hole, and far away, someone screamed.

I sprinted towards a tunnel opening to my right. The screaming and the howling grew louder and louder, and I clawed at my face as I ran. _Get it out of my head!_ The spores made me choke and cough as I ran, and the smell of wine overwhelmed me with its sickening sweetness.

_Bang!_

A loud thud from up ahead stopped me in my tracks. _Bang!_ I shook my head and held my crowbar out in front, ready to fight off whatever was coming for me, be it the flood of rats, the hole-faced man, or whatever else would come my way. Tributes, even. Those existed.

The source of the banging, however, wasn't coming for me. Red dust swirled around and between the clouds of spores, seemingly billowing out of the craggy ceiling and oozing walls. Ahead, a lone figure stood ramrod-straight, facing the wall. The person, a girl around my age and height by the looks of it, had the same dark ponytail as the little girl in the chamber. A threadbare yellow scarf dangled from around her neck. She didn't make a noise, and I couldn't see her face, but the girl bent backwards, reared up, and slammed her forehead into the wall.

_Bang!_

I gasped and recoiled. She didn't seem to notice. The girl leaned back again and smashed her face into the wall a second time without a grimace or yelp of pain. Her back hunched and her shoulders stooped, but she reared back and smacked her forehead into the stone yet again. _Bang!_

With each step I took forward, the girl slumped down another inch. I held my weapon out to protect myself, but she was far more preoccupied bashing her brains out over and over and over. By the time I passed her by, she was on her knees, still smacking her forehead into the wall. A patch on the stone just above where her face impacted glistened, shining with a bright, silvery hue like the solar panels at home.

_Bang!_

By the time I turned the corner down another corridor, she was lying flat on her stomach. Still the girl tipped her head back, her ponytail swinging behind her as she pressed her face into the wall with as much force as she could muster. _Bap._

Another chamber like the first opened up after a series of winding corridors, and standing in the middle of it was the same girl – or at least one who looked identical to the face-mashing one. She wasn't engaging in self-destruction, however, but standing over a large stone basin, her hand rhythmically moving up and down. The girl chortled with a laugh somewhere between a groaning cackle and a halting moan, stuttering and shattering the frayed ends of my nerves. My mind thickened and flowed like molasses, and when I approached her, the air around me felt like cotton fuzz.

She glanced over her shoulder. Something about her face was so familiar, from her full cheeks to her blue eyes and thin eyebrows, but I just couldn't make it out. She shook her head and smiled as tears flowed down her cheeks. Something wailed atop the basin.

When I caught a glimpse of what was going on, I nearly died of fright. The girl clutched a knife in her hand and jabbed it again and again into the stomach of a boy no older than eighteen. Black ooze seeped from the gaping wound, and he groaned and cried out in pain. Like her, he, too, was familiar. His gaunt cheeks and slender build reminded me so much of Glenn, in a way, but the way his shoulders bunched up with packs of muscle mirrored the boy from District 7's stocky frame. His thick arms, his dull eyes, his fine brown hair and rugged brown jacket that the girl's knife had shredded, all of it piqued little familiarities that I couldn't place.

I stared on in grotesque curiosity as the girl stabbed him again and again. I couldn't take my eyes off of the scene. Then, with her knife halfway down for another stroke, the girl stopped. The water around her feet ripped, and she glared at me, her eyes accusatory, her brows furrowed in anger. She smiled, laughed, and held the knife up to her own throat. I thought she'd slice it open, but instead, the entire world exploded.

An inhuman howl blasted the girl and the boy into shatters as slimy pale tendrils rushed at me from the haze. Whatever I'd been watching, it was gone now – and what was attacking me was _very_ real.

I scrambled backwards and flailed with my crowbar. Some sort of giant water beast lurched out of the darkness, its head still concealed in shadow but its many arms whirling in a storm in front of me. One of them slammed down into the water and reached out at me, snaking towards my feet. I screamed and brought down my crowbar.

"_Hroaw!_" the beast howled and heaved forward. Its tentacles were ghastly things, each one as thick as my torso but lined with tiny, marble-sized suckers and sharp, black, needle-like teeth. They flailed at my ankles, and one grabbed hold with a grip like a vise. I yelped as it dug its needles into my skin, pulling me towards the darkness with incredible force. I smacked at it with my weapon, whacking aside another incoming tendril and smashing at the beast with the crowbar's point until it released me with a groaning scream.

I got to my feet and ran. A tentacle lunged at me, missing my feet by millimeters as I rushed towards the nearest corridor exit I could see. Behind me the beast snarled and splashed, with waves lapping at my legs. It wasn't giving up. I had to move.

_Run!_ My feet ached as a godsend opened up down the corridor in front of me – stairs! I sprinted up the cobblestone as the spore-infested haze thinned out and my mind cleared. The beast howled behind me, screaming its inhuman obscenities as I dashed towards the growing light of lightning strikes up above. When I emerged into the open air with the ruins rising around me, the dusty air tasted like honey.

_Who would make a place like that?_ Goosebumps ran down my arms as I glanced back at the dark pit behind me. The beast howled again. I didn't know what I'd seen down there. Whether it was real, some manifestation of my mind, a series of hallucinations, a gamesmaker trick...I didn't know. I didn't want to explore those underground depths for one more second.

"Terra!"

Ember's shout cleared the last of the haze from my mind. I spun as my ally came sprinting up the road, and a wave of relief washed over me. "Ember!" I yelled,, smiling and dashing towards him as something buzzed by my ear.

_Whizz-thump!_

Ember stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes bulged and his mouth gaped. I paused, confused, until I saw the obsidian knife buried halfway up to its hilt in his chest.

"No! Ember!"

He fell to his knees, his face frozen in shock. I didn't know what I was doing. Heat washed over me as I sprinted towards him, desperate to help him to his feet, dead-set on clinging to the one thing in this place that wasn't trying to tear me down.

I didn't get that far. A massive hand grabbed my shoulder and hurled me to the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of me as colorful lights danced in front of my eyes. I just made out a towering shadow jumping at me before a blow to my head turned out the lights.


	18. The Price of Pity

_**+ Whoa: Thank you to the huge flurry of reviews, Dancing-Souls, and your latest review, ArtemisCarolineSnow! Fast-paced chapter ahead on the heels of the last one's big word-splurge.**_

**/ / / / /**

A red light shined in the darkness.

Throbbing pain pulsed through my head. It made me double over as I came to, winced, and rubbed my eyes. At least I hadn't died – or if I'd had, I'd gone to the Dark Hell. Lightning still flashed in the sky, thunder still rumbled with its ursine roar, and the hazy clouds above still drifted overhead. Spores danced about in the air here and there, and ashes and bones littered the ground beneath me.

Bones? I rubbed my eyes harder, blinked, and got my bearings. Whatever had happened, I wasn't on the city streets anymore. High granite walls sloped inward and upward all around me. Up above the rim of this hole, a trio of red flares hissed, their smoke trails drifting off into the sky with a nightmarish glow. When I stood up, the spindly gray bones underfoot cracked and splintered. The sound echoed in the pit. Even my breathing sounded deafening down here, as if I'd wake some slumbering creature snoozing in the dark crevasse to my left.

A shot of fear sent waves of heat running down my arms. I was alone, I had none of my gear – shit! Ember – oh gods. I remembered the knife, his wide eyes and shocked expression running in front of my eyes again. Whatever had killed him must have dropped me in here, and I had a strange feeling it wasn't just leaving me to die from thirst over a few days.

I felt woozy as I stumbled towards the nearest wall. Nausea slammed me, but I forced myself to stand up straight. I'd hoped to find handholds in the wall, crooks, crevices, or something I could grip to climb out of this pit. I wasn't dead, after all: The Gamesmakers had to have a reason for letting me live when they'd killed off Ember. I couldn't imagine that some other tribute had dragged me down here to die. Why not just kill me?

If this was some sort of sick test, than I had to figure out how to beat it. I groped along the wall through the shadows, feeling along the course granite for a handhold. Panic ballooned in my gut as I stumbled along the perimeter of the pit. Nothing, nothing, nothing but sharp rock that pricked my fingers and taunted me as it sloped inwards towards the oculus above. The red lights laughed, jeering at me with the promise of a freedom outside my grasp.

I was missing something. I got down on all fours, crawling around the bottom of the pit. Bone splinters poked my palms with time-worn needles. The gods only knew whose remains I was straddling, whether they were some Gamesmaker invention or part of an actual mass grave that beckoned for me to join it.

A cold gust blew up from the crevasse as I reached the edge of the pit. Shadow faded into pitch black darkness in its bowels. _Come_, an imaginary voice whispering from somewhere deep in its inky depths. _You've tried your hardest. You've fought. You've killed. There's no shame in failure. _

It was a tempting thought, certainly preferable to wasting away down here if I couldn't figure out how to get up these cliffs all around me. Thoughts of Glenn drifted through my mind. _There's nothing for you if you win_, I imagined him saying. _Do you want to spend year after year caring about kids, only to watch them die? Do you want to wade around a district that doesn't care about you for the rest of your life? Come on, Terra. Make it easy on yourself. You're already screwed._

I shuddered and turned away from the rift. Maybe Glenn was right – maybe there wasn't anything waiting for the kid who walked away from this place. Maybe I'd end up like Daud or Finch, watching kid after kid die in horrible ways every year, but I wanted to live. I didn't want to see what came next just yet, and if the Gamesmakers were testing my will to live, I'd give it my best shot.

I don't know how long passed – an hour, two hours, ten, it all felt the same. Every time I walked along the edge of the wall, feeling up every inch of it for a route out of here, nothing turned up. The bone-covered floor held no secret passage, and when I dipped my hand down into the crevasse, it met only icy gusts from the deep.

A chilling realization ran through my head as I stared up at the red flares above. This looked less and less like a test for _me_…and more and more like a test for the other tributes on the surface. If so, I wasn't just trapped here. I was _bait_.

I laid down on the carpet of bones and gripped my sides. _Help. Please_.

Eternity passed. Hunger gnawed at my guts, and my tongue dried into a thick, crispy log. My head still throbbed, and every now and then, dots of light would bob and weave in the darkness. I wasn't just seeing things; I was hearing them, too. Faint sounds reverberated down from somewhere above. I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the world and clutched my arms tighter to my chest.

The sounds grew louder.

"…doesn't look right. Why d'you wanna look so bad?"

I sat up in a flash. I hadn't imagined that, I was sure of it. Someone was up there, and unless they were talking to themselves, they weren't alone.

A higher voice, a girl, answered the first speaker: "I just want to look! Just hold on a sec."

Heat flushed across my face. I needed their help to get out of here, but the odds weren't in my favor. Whoever was up there, they had no reason to trust me, let alone help me – and all it would take would be one shot from an arrow or one well-thrown knife and I was finished. I scuttled back towards the lip of the crevasse, peering down into the darkness and weighing my options. It was dark enough down here that they might not see me, but if they did, that gorge was the only hiding spot I had. Could I climb into it without plunging to my death?

"Delfin, gimme the flashlight. It's dark."

_Wait a minute…_

A sudden white flash blinded me. I stumbled back, shielding my eyes with my arm and scooting as close to the edge of the crevasse as I could.

"What the…" said the speaker above me. "Wait. Wait, Delfin, get over here!"

I shuddered. I remembered that name. I knew who was up there, and I knew they were more than capable of killing me. My eyes adjusted to the light as a scowling, well-built boy sidled up alongside a lithe girl with orange hair above. He planted a spear into the dust with a _thump_ and said, "What am I s'posed to be looking at?"

"Look! It's the girl from the chariot behind us back in the parade."

Tethys. She'd spoken to me like a colleague, not a competitor, back in the garage before the chariot parade. That felt like eternity ago, and I had no idea if the girl from District 4 felt so sympathetic towards me now. My breath froze in my chest and my leg trembled as I waited on them: It was their move now, whether they'd help me, kill me, or leave me.

Her district partner sure didn't. Delfin groaned and stamped his foot, saying, "Tethys, c'mon. Let's go. There isn't anything we can use down there."

"Delfin, look at her!" Tethys said, furrowing her brow and waving her finger in my direction. "That'd just be a dick move to leave her down there. How'd she get down there, anyway?"

"Tethys, _leave it_. This is stupid."

The girl pushed her partner aside and bent down at the lip of the pit. "Hey!" she called down to me. "You okay?"

I shook my head and tried to say something, but the words lumped in my throat. Delfin's glare made me want to shrivel into the gorge.

"Your name's Terra, right?" Tethys called down, and before I could answer, she turned back to her partner. "Gimme the rope."

Delfin sighed, held a fist to his forehead, and said, "Look…I know you didn't like that last girl getting it – "

"You fucking shanked her. Obviously I didn't like it."

"Do you even get it? Someone else has to die if we're gonna keep going, Tethys! You don't even know this girl, and if she's dumb enough to get stuck in a hole – "

"Do you get it? You're turning into a murderer!"

"I'm _doing_ what we need to do to stay alive!"

"Delfin, the girl from 6 was sleeping!"

"And what if she would have found us later, hm? She had a knife! Open your damn eyes! She could've – "

"Stop with the fucking excuses!" Tethys snarled, her face inches from Delfin's. "I'm not going to let you kill everything left and right just so you can say it's good for me! I am _not_ a monster, and I didn't think you were, either!"

Delfin backed up, uncurling his fist and doing his best to reason. "Look," he said. "You start taking on charity cases, then what happens if…whatever her face is here, Terra, runs and does something stupid? Is she even fourteen?"

"Well, at least I'm not stabbing people," Tethys said, every syllable oozing bitterness. "Maybe I can do a little good for someone else, even if you can't. If you really care about me, then give me the rope. Now."

He sighed and unholstered his backpack. "You can figure out how to get your lost cause outta there," he said, tossing it at her chest.

Tethys yanked a long, thick, woolen rope out of the bag and uncoiled it. "Still there?" she yelled to me as she flung the rope down into the pit. "Tie this around your waist and between your legs, like a harness. I'll pull you out."

I didn't have a choice…but as I took the rope in my hands, caution surged through my mind. "What happens when I get up there?" I asked, just loud enough so she could hear. I glanced up at Delfin, who stormed around the edge of the pit, spear in hand and out in front as if he were eager to stab the next thing that moved.

"Don't worry about him," Tethys said. "Just come up. I'm not gonna hurt you, and I won't let him, either."

Better than nothing. I pulled the rope around my hips and underneath one leg, tying it off as best as I could in front of me and grabbing on tight. _Yank!_ I yelped as Tethys jerked the rope up. It dug at my thigh, but I winced and bore the pain.

"Tethys…" Delfin said, his voice suddenly lacking all of its bravado.

"What?"

"Hurry up. C'mon."

"Why? Are you in a hurry?"

Just then, I heard it too. It sounded like a chorus of sopranos all cheering at once, and it took me a second to figure out what was making the noise above: Rats. Hundreds of them. _Oh no._ The rope dug painfully against my thigh as Tethys swore, jerking me up with harder and faster pulls.

"Tethys!"

"I'm going!"

I gritted my teeth as the edge of the pit inched closer and closer. Falling from here would kill me – only darkness swirled beneath me as Tethys hoisted me higher. The sound of rats squirming and running was overwhelming. One of them tumbled into the pit, falling past my arm and flailing its little legs as it fell into the inky blackness below. Suddenly, everything went silent – just before a mighty, sorrowful roar deafened me.

I was high up enough now that I could see some of the ground above, where crumbling stone statues stuck out of the black desert sand. Atop the nearest dune, a massive black shadow rushed in fast, like a tidal wave made of billowing cloud. It roared and wailed as Delfin held his spear aloft.

"Tethys…" he said.

"Gotcha!" Tethys yelled, grabbing my arm and pulling me up onto the sand. "C'mon, run! Delfin!"

"You don't gotta tell me!" he shouted, pivoting and sprinting after us as the darkness rushed in.

My legs ached and sparks flitted in front of my eyes, but I kept running. Maybe those two didn't know what that shadow was capable of, but it had killed Ember – and I knew it could kill all three of us if we stayed here. If Tethys hadn't taken pity on me, it would have killed me, too.

I sucked in a deep breath and ran.


	19. The Negotiators

_**+ Thanks to ScoutMeminger15, ArtemisCarolineSnow, Dancing-Souls, and MyleyHxox for the reviews, and to new followers and old readers alike! Sorry about the long wait – I ended up re-doing about half this chapter to accommodate some later events I added to the storyboard. Questions, comments, concerns – always appreciated! Enjoy!**_

**/ / / / / **

Cyrus had never liked District 4.

People in the capitol preened over the sea's bounty. The seafood, the shells, the exotic creatures caught and imported as pets, it was all enough for them. For Cyrus, the place stunk of boat oil and salt water, and the best transportation around was just as likely to give you seasickness as get you to your destination in one piece. The cackling of the gulls circling overhead on the docks made him clench his teeth.

This wasn't a place for a city boy who'd grown up surrounded by the neon-lined towers of District 1 and now walked in the shade of the Capitol's silver spires. Given the circumstances, it wasn't the time, either.

Cyrus had done his best to conceal the Capitol in him. He wasn't much of a public figure among the districts, and he'd gone even further by letting gray stubble cover his chin and cheeks and his thinning hair run off in all directions atop his head. He'd had a Peacekeeper pick up the tawny tunic that covered him from shoulder to mid-thigh from a vendor in Manheim's Gulch, the poor residential zone on the far eastern side of the district home to thousands of cannery workers and machine technicians. He'd even told his Peacekeeper escorts to keep a wide berth, scouting the docks with hidden snipers and camouflaged aerial drones rather than pushing aside crowds in force with all the subtlety of a killer whale. Even with all that, Cyrus felt the sideways looks and hushed whispers from passersby.

Maybe it was his smell: Try as he might, Cyrus doubted even a year's worth of work would scrub out the Capitol's artificial pheromones and aromas that wafted down the city's streets. That, or he was just getting too old to remember how to blend in with a foreign crowd.

An unpleasant cognitive dissonance plagued Cyrus's mind as he walked down the docks. The taverns and storefronts were run-down and covered in silt, adorned with paint peeling from creaking wooden signs and smeared with grease and grime. So many barnacles clung to the piers, it was hard to tell that wood still supported the docks. Yet despite the dilapidation and ubiquitous bird poop, the crowds surged with a youthful energy. Bar patrons clustered around splinter-covered tables cradled mugs of sloppy brown drink and laughed like children. Old men and women argued with each other like they were preparing for a political convention. The people of District 4 were coming alive as the infrastructure crumbled.

Cyrus wasn't looking for just any bar, though. The Western Whale was the last establishment along the largest row of piers among the docks, its tables and chairs much emptier than the other watering holes. Cyrus knew that had to be no coincidence. It was a welcome.

He felt for the pistol strapped to his abdomen. The last thing he needed was to start something, but according to everything Lucrezia's information had told him, this Rio West wasn't a rash man. Hard, perhaps, cynical, influential, but not rash. He'd earned the district's respect through experience and time captaining ships, and a strong leader could go a long way in relieving District 4's tension.

Still…even the most charismatic of men could only hold the mob at bay for so long.

The pub's blue wooden doors creaked as Cyrus pushed them open. A haze filled the interior of the tavern, as if a crowd had been smoking inside just a minute prior. A lonely glass half-filled with brackish grog sat on the damp, dark bar to Cyrus's left, accompanied only by a dirty, wrinkled washcloth. Barstools here and there were pulled out, with one lying on its side in the corner of the room. The groaning aluminum blades of a tired fan overhead serenaded the empty tavern with a droning _thump-thump-thump._ Whoever had left, they'd left behind the smells of salt water, sturgeon, and sweat.

"You didn't do a good job looking the part."

Cyrus wheeled around. Behind him, a statuesque women with silky, silver-blonde hair kicked her feet up on a table and watched him with half-closed green eyes. "The guys who wear that kinda outfit wear real beards," she said, shaking a glass full of a crimson drink that looked far too Capitolian for this bar. "Longer than the stubble the fishermen and boatmen wear, but not too long that it'll get caught in the factory machinery. You're doing it wrong if the Odairs are your guide."

"Ms. Larson," said Cyrus. He clenched his jaw and a fist. "You clear out this place?"

Brooke Larson laughed. "You were a lot less grumpy when old Snow was still in charge. That was, what, six, seven years ago since the last time Seneca Crane did a Games? Made us all come in every year? I like this new Gamesmaker much better. I can sit here every summer and not give a shit while Finnick goes to see the city. Didn't think I'd ever even see you again."

Cyrus narrowed his eyes and took a step back. She'd been expecting him. Brooke had grown up a lot since she'd won the 81st Hunger Games, but an aura of danger and cunning still hung about her. "Someone told you I was coming here?"

"Not her. They told me."

Rio West stepped up to the bar behind them. He clenched the ragged washcloth and ran it over his arm's leathery skin, pausing over his hand to squeeze out a few drops of spilled beer between his fingers. "I know who you are. I'd have thought you'd barge in here with a phalanx of Peacekeepers, dressed in some fancy robe. You get a little of my respect, even if you do have a pair of snipers watching through the windows."

"Mister West?"

"Rio West. Haven't been much of a mister for years."

Cyrus frowned and sat down across from Brooke. "I hear you're an influential man. Informed one, too, by the looks of it. How'd you know I was coming?"

"No one you'd know. I'll tell you my sources if you tell me yours," Rio said with a smile.

"I'll keep my secrets, thanks."

"It's better that way. Every man should keep some secrets," Cyrus said, taking a seat on a dirty tabletop and letting his legs hang off the edge. "We like our privacy here, Cyrus, just as we don't like your formalities. Why don't you skip the rest of the introduction and get to business?"

"At least let the man have a drink, Rio," Brooke interjected.

She grabbed a glass from the neighboring table and had poured it half-full of whatever she was drinking before Cyrus stopped her. "Business is fine," he said, but he didn't trust Brooke's pouring, either. He remembered what she'd done fifteen years ago. He could still see her catching fish after fish from the crystal-clear river in the arena's glen to feed her allies. He also still saw her crushing the tiny red mushrooms into the fish as they cooked…and recalled the bodies of her allies, their faces blue and gasping for breath that never came.

No sane man would accept her offers.

"I'd have thought it'd be obvious why I'm here," Cyrus said, leaning back in his chair and glancing out the window. A glint of glass shined off in the distance from atop a building. Security was still watching. "You had a big commotion the other day. I'm not going to hide from facts. I know tension's been high here."

"A commotion?" Rio said with a wry grin. "Dead little girl washes up on the dock, and someone parks her body out for everyone to see, right alongside a warning to all of us. Little bit more than a commotion."

"And you think – "

"Not even the first time something like that's happened," Brooke cut in. "It's these little incidents. Guy found a couple out on the edge of the Gulch. Bullets in their chest. Didn't have no contraband, nothing illegal. Just shot. Only your people have guns around here. Peacekeepers don't even have the decency to tell us why they're killing people anymore. You think that might make people mad?"

Cyrus paused, held a finger out, and said, "Look, I've already gone over the Peacekeeper records on my way here. There's nothin' in there about any killings recently. They haven't executed anyone, haven't been dragging them about the docks as punishment…hell, by the sound of it, they're trying to play it loose and give you guys some breathing space. They're well-trained. They're not stupid enough to shake a hornet's nest."

"Of course they're not going to record it!" Brooke cackled. "Not when they do it to get their rocks off!"

"Or if it's nothin' but a crazed and sadistic local, looking to make things worse!" Cyrus countered. Heat flashed across his face.

Rio held out his palm in front of Brooke. "Calm down. And Cyrus, I'm well aware of Peacekeeper training. I know they're disciplined. And I know that they can sometimes take things too far, too. I remember District 8."

He sat back, pulling his washcloth between his fingers and closing his eyes. "I was friends with the mayor's brother then. What was it, about twenty years ago? You must've been alongside old Snow by then. Heard it all from my friend, courtesy of the mayor. Peacekeepers take things too far, start seeing everyone else as the enemy, and turn a short jail sentence or a fine into a few hangings. Suddenly everyone thinks they're next for doing something as simple as going out after a curfew. What did you think was going to happen then? Anything but three hundred dead, a third of them Peacekeepers?"

"Now," Rio continued, leaning forward and staring Cyrus right in the eyes. "Way I hear it from Brooke, District 8's not full of the most thick-skinned bunch in Panem. Not so much here. Here, we hallow no man. Not me. Not Brooke. Not the Odairs. Not you. And not the man you bow to."

"Don't push me, West."

"I think you know the game around here, Cyrus," Rio said. His words weren't so respectful anymore, but full of steel and ice. "It's not the kind of games you're used to in your silver towers. Here we speak as family. It's a voluntary hierarchy, captain and crew, not master and servant. When you or your Peacekeepers try to upset that balance, then I find it a little hard to convince everyone to hold back. And that's why you're really here, isn't it? You want me to hold them back?"

"I'm just looking to keep the peace."

Rio frowned and folded his hands. "I respect that you're man enough to listen. Old Snow wouldn't have done the same if he sat there. You already know how to keep the peace, though. We live with your rule. We live with your Hunger Games. But people can only take so much fear before they feel like they have nothing to lose."

He rocked back in his chair until the seat back rested against the table behind him. "You're a smart man, Cyrus. You wouldn't have lasted so long if you weren't. Things go back to normal, and I'll do my best to temper the crowd. I can't promise anything if your people won't give us the same courtesy."

**/ / / / /**

The darkness held back at the edge of the city.

My sides burned as I stumbled to keep up with Delfin and Tethys. Those two had sprinted through avenue after ruined avenue, and it had taken all my breath – and a little encouragement from Tethys – to stay behind them. My head throbbed with every step.

"Stop," Delfin growled as the streets turned to black sand and scattered stone blocks replaced the ruined concourse. "Hold up here."

I grasped my knees and winced, thankful for the chance to catch my breath as whatever chased us receded back into the night. Just as I started to ease the pain in my side, however, a rough hand gripped my shoulder and threw me down. Pain exploded through the back of my head like a shot from the arena's cannons.

"The hell was that thing?" Delfin snarled. His face was an inch from mine when I opened my eyes, his teeth clenched and his brow furrowed. "What was that and why the hell were you even down in that pit?"

"Delfin!"

"Tethys, would you just _shut up for a minute?_"

"Why don't you?" Tethys shouted. She shoved Delfin off of me and kicked sand at him. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Me? I am looking out for _you!_"

"And what, you think she's going to kill us?" Tethys laughed and rolled her eyes.

I swallowed my words and looked on as they argued. Tethys clearly wasn't at ease with this whole killing business, even if she looked the part of a Hunger Games star. Now wasn't the time to admit that the arena had given me a crash course on the subject.

"Finnick picked you because you said you were willing to do what you had to do to get out of here!" Delfin snapped at Tethys, waving his finger at her face. "And ever since we step foot in this place, now you're all the sudden so concerned with keeping your hands clean."

"Okay, but at least I'm not afraid of everything that moves!" she yelled back at him. "You keep saying these dumb things. Oh, you're looking out for us. You care. Well, you certainly don't care about anything or anyone else, I guess!"

"Look, this is not the time to get all holy!"

"Holy? That's what you call being a decent person? I didn't spend ten years growing up with you to watch you become some sort of…some beast or something! You said we wouldn't team up with Acheron because he was just like that!"

"And I am not like him, I am not – "

"You've acted just like that the past who knows how many days we've been here!"

I sized up the situation as they screamed at each other. If I'd have felt better, I might have tried to run for it right then. Tagging along with two people who were at each other's throats, even if they were from the same district and supposedly teammates, seemed like a recipe for disaster down the line. And yet…clearly Tethys was trying to hold on to her morals, even if Delfin was taking the pragmatic approach. I could use her, yet I sympathized with him. As much as I hated to admit it, Delfin was probably right about things: About the arena, about killing, about me.

Even so, he clearly cared about Tethys. I'd seen it as early as the chariot parade. I had to take advantage of any opportunity I could find, and his weakness was a big opportunity just waiting in front of me.

"Please," I interrupted just as Tethys renewed her screaming. "Please, I'm just trying to stay alive, okay? Same as you. I don't want to hurt anyone.

They both stopped to look at me, so I took my luck a step further. "Look, my district partner died in front of my face. I just…I can't…" I widened my eyes as much as possible and looked right at Tethys. "You don't have to help me, but please just let me go. I won't bother you, I swear. I'll just run off somewhere. You won't have to worry about me. Someone else will probably just murder me anyway."

Tethys stuck out her lip and glowered at Delfin. "There's what, eight left? Including us?" she said.

"If we haven't missed a cannon," sighed Delfin, closing his eyes and clutching a hand to his forehead. I had a feeling he was powerless to stop Tethys's train.

"I'm gonna do something good before I win or die," said Tethys. "And so are you."

"I'm done arguing with you. Fine."

Tethys scowled and pulled me up by the hand. "C'mon Terra. You can stick with us." She glanced over at Delfin and added, "If there's really just eight or so of us left in here, we'll know when it's down to just us three. Then we can break up, do whatever happens then. 'Til then, we'll be fine together."

"Thank you," I whispered, holding onto her hand just a moment longer than necessary. "Tethys – thanks. Really."

She was a kind girl and she meant well, but I just knew that sometime soon, Tethys was going to run into a cruel dose of reality in the arena – whether it was from another tribute, from Delfin, or from me. I'd cared about Ember. I'd even cared about Glenn. Both of them had died in horrible fashion, and I wasn't going to follow in their footsteps. I'd survived on luck alone so far, but if we really were down to the final eight, I had to stop caring so much and start thinking instead.


End file.
